The Big Lie

The received truth that mental illness is strictly a medical problem, the result of a chemical imbalance alone, is the loose equivalent of a lie. It's the kind of fib we tell ourselves in this culture. It soothes us somehow when we know half the answers to a riddle, and find the answers that we do know to be unsettling while the answers we don't know terrify us. Of course, it's a natural enough impulse.

But it's still a lie. The brain chemistry imbalance theory of mental illness remains unproven in strict scientific terms. And there is a decade of data, scientific and anecdotal, which establishes that psych meds don't work very well. That's not my wild ass assessment of the landscape facing patients, caregivers and families. The National Institute of Mental Health says it. Doctors who are honest know it, even if they won't speak the truth publicly. Patients know it all too well.

If I had read those same words 5 years ago, I would have thought whomever had written them was off the deep end. But I'm not.

The sad truth is that nothing is quite as it should be with mental illness--the science base is shot with holes, treatment paradigms rely excessively on medication, patients who are expected to take these meds for years and years are getting left in the lurch.

I refuse to accept this, but I will leave it at that for now.