New Mental Health Paradigm is Good News

Capital Times, Saturday, June 18, 2011

There is a new intellectual framework recently arrived within the psychiatric profession that will dramatically affect the way we will think about mental health in the decades ahead. It’s called “Interpersonal Neurobiology.”

In this new mental health science our mind is seen as being derived from the interaction of the brain and interpersonal processes, especially in our early development. Because this new science is more broadly based on both biological and social science research, it becomes a much more integrated medical discipline. The present molecular or psycho-pharmacological emphasis alone is no longer sufficient.

Perhaps the most significant and salient finding from recent neural science research is best expressed by the principal architect, Dr. Daniel J. Siegel, in Mindsight – The New Science of Personal Transformation. Siegel states:

“Interactions with the environment, especially relationships with other people, directly shape the development of the brain’s structure and function. There is no need to choose between brain or mind, biology or experience, nature or nurture. These divisions are unhelpful and inhibit clear thinking about an important and complex subject: the developing brain.”

While our genes remain an important component of our mental functioning, developmental factors are also significant and continue throughout the life span. For example, recent neural research shows that learning produces alterations in gene expression and in our synapses. Thus human interaction both shapes and is shaped by an ever-changing and dynamic brain throughout life.

The corollary is that heredity alone does not necessarily need to be perceived as a permanent condition and that human experience throughout the life span has the potential to modify, neutralize and repair constitutional determinants. Such life-long brain plasticity findings can bring hope to millions who are seeking healing and daily transformation.

These latest neural findings have long-term policy and funding implications for long-term mental health care of persons with serious chronic mental diseases. With modern brain scanning technology and ever-growing neural evidence that supports an ever-changing brain -- whether psycho-pharmacological and/or psycho therapeutically induced -- it now becomes morally necessary to consider scheduling major periodic psychiatric and/or neurological exams for persons suffering from “chronic” mental illness.

Persons suffering from “chronic” mental disorders should not be stuck with old dead-end and long-term diagnoses but regularly and comprehensively reviewed in the light of these latest neural science findings.

These findings presented in readily readable form, will be welcome news to those who daily suffer from mental disorders and their families, and for mental health practitioners who are in search of a more open and holistic and balanced therapy strategy.

Readers can learn more at Mindgains.org and MindsightInstitute.com.

Benedict is a family mental health reform advocate.