Toward critical consideration of chemical imbalance explanations for mental disorders.
Last edited Wed Mar 26, 2014, 11:49 AM - Edit history (3)
It has become de rigor to explain all mental illness as chemical imbalances in the brain. This explanation dominates popular conversations about mental illness and is done largely without critical consideration of its rightful claim to such hegemony.
There are likely various reasons for this that boil down to how belief in chemical imbalance satisfies various personal and social needs ...blaming chemicals fulfills popular expectations of the reductionist progress in the world of science and the relationship of pharmaceutical bullets to medical treatment; belief in chemical imbalance also supplies a ready answer to unknowns and can be applied to salve over gaps in understanding; operationally this belief enables the mentally ill (and their family and friends) to distance themselves from the circle of causation and thereby culpability (even in 2014 guilt and shame remain the personal experiences of the mentally ill).
This isn't to say that there is no evidence that biochemistry influences mental disorders and their treatment. There certainly is evidence that various chemicals, traditional and pharmaceutical, legal and illegal do influence mental function and effect experience with mental disorders. That is particularly true of depression, where the history of chemical imbalance really took root.
The problem is that the chemical imbalance explanation is too often deployed dogmatically and without critical consideration. Here is a link to a readable online academic article that is only slightly dated. It can help give some perspective on chemical imbalance, its rise, and the issues raised by the chemical imbalance explanation as myth:
From the introduction of The Media and the Chemical Imbalance Theory of Depression. Jonathan Leo and Jeffrey R. Lacasse
Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2007, 10.1007/s12115-007-9047-3:
In the world of American popular culture, the current view of mental illness depicts someone walking down the street, and everything is fine, life is good. Then all of a sudden, out of the blue, a chemical imbalance emerges. At the root of every twisted thought lurks a twisted molecule—so the thinking goes. A large part of the credit for this belief certainly goes to the pharmaceutical companies, yet they are not the only source of information on mental health issues. For many people, another major source of information is the mainstream press, which often alludes to the chemical imbalance theory as if it were a proven scientific fact. In an effort to determine what evidence the press uses to support their statements about the chemical imbalance theory of depression, we attempted to engage the media in a conversation to learn more about what lies behind statements such as: “Mental illnesses are simply chemical imbalances.” In support of their statements, several members of the press did not provide any citations, while some referred us to interesting articles about serotonin research, but not a single citation could be considered direct proof of an underlying chemical imbalance as the cause of depression. (The term ‘mental illness’ is used throughout this article due to the fact that it often appears in media accounts. The more technical term, “mental disorder,” is considered the more correct term within modern psychiatric literature.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12115-007-9047-3/fulltext.html
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