There are two major errors in the current approach to “mental health”. (These may be not errors, but deliberate distortions for political/economic reasons.)
The first is the insistence that many separate, discrete, and reliable mental illnesses exist, comparable to the many genuine reliable physical illnesses. The latter result from identifiable lesions, or microorganisms, or organ failure (as originally proposed 150 years ago by Rudolf Virchow) and have recognizable markers.
Mental disorders, on the other hand, are inferred from the behavior of persons, and no objective physical cause has been found, despite years of search. The insistence by psychiatry that abnormal behavior can only result from abnormal brain functioning (not yet identified) is nonsense. We already know that abnormal behavior often occurs with normal brain functioning. We also know that so-called mental disorders often occur, or are exacerbated by, the stresses that accompany abject poverty (or other toxic, hopeless social environments).
The highest rates of “idiocy and lunacy” in America were first among the millions of immigrant poverty-stricken Irish after the potato crop failure of 1845 then on successive waves of the poor Swedes, then the Slavs and Russian Jews, then the Southern Italians, now the Blacks and Hispanics...as each group achieved good education and economic success their incidence of “idiocy and lunacy” fell to the population average.
Which leads to the second big error: the insistence on individual one-to-one intervention. Public Health has long taught that “No disease or disorder has ever been eliminated or controlled by individual treatment”. NO DISEASE OR DISORDER HAS EVER BEEN TREATED OUT OF EXISTENCE. Only prevention is effective. But the prevention of mental/emotional disorders can only happen with the reduction of poverty and toxic social environments, and such programs would be enormously expensive in tax dollars (for minimum wages, housing, education, health etc.) So, the Establishment backs the “brain defect model,” as it is far less expensive. Research support is available for a wide range of brain research, but funds are rarely available for research into social causes.
George W. Albee, PhD 