Psychiatric disorders — like autism, depression, and
schizophrenia — take a terrible toll on human suffering. We know
much less about their treatment and the understanding of their
basic mechanisms than we do about diseases of the body. Think
about it: in 2013 — the second decade of the millennium — if
you’re concerned about a cancer diagnosis, and you go to your
doctor, you get bone scans, biopsies, and blood tests. In 2013,
if you’re concerned about a depression diagnosis, you go to your
doctor and what do you get? A questionnaire. Part of the reason
for this is that we have an oversimplified and increasingly
outmoded view of the biological basis of psychiatric disorders.
We tend to view them — and the popular press aids and abets this
view — as ‘chemical imbalances’ in the brain, as if the brain
were some kind of chemical soup full of dopamine, serotonin, and
norepinephrine. This view is conditioned by the fact that many
of the drugs that are prescribed to treat these disorders, like
Prozac, act by globall