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The National Institute of Mental Health, under the leadership of neuroscientist Tom Insel, operated on the assumption that mental health conditions are fundamentally "brain diseases". They hypothesized that advances in neurobiology would ultimately lead to cures for the wide range of psychological and emotional disorders we see in our society. Two years after retiring from his position as their presidesnt, Insel gave us this quote.
“I spent 13 years at NIMH really pushing on neuroscience… and when I look back on that I realize that while I think I succeeded in getting lots of cool papers published by cool scientists at fairly large costs—I think $20 billion—I don’t think we moved the needle in reducing suicide, reducing hospitalizations, improving recovery for the tens of millions of people who have mental illness. I hold myself accountable for that.”
These projects produced lots of helpful information for neuroscience but the $20 billion investment ultimately failed. Their goal was to advance treatment of mental and emotional disorders and they simply did not do that. To Insel's credit, once he recognized this he retired his position so that someone else could take the NIMH a new direction.
It is time for the general public to become reacquainted with what the founders of psychology learned long ago. While the brain and mental life are very interconnected, they are also quite separate. It is time to hand the treatment spotlight back over to psychotherapists who work extensively with mental and emotional disorders.
#TherapyKC