Two recent books by historians explore the crisis in biological psychiatry
I think this section is worth emphasizing - mental disorders are as unlikely to be due primarily to underlying genetic issues as getting an infectious disease is:<p>&gt; &quot;The oft-cited claim, for example, that schizophrenia has a genetic basis has failed to pass scientific muster. As Scull discusses, after failing to find a Mendelian set of genes that could explain schizophrenia, researchers in the 2000s pinned their hopes on new genome-wide association studies (GWAS) that could investigate hundreds of thousands of base pairs in the search for genetic linkages to psychiatric disorders. But GWAS studies have not revealed a clear genetic basis for schizophrenia (or bipolar disorder, for that matter). While combining hundreds of genetic sites can help explain, at best, 8 percent of the observed variance of schizophrenia, it is still possible for an individual to have many of these genetic variations without developing the disease.&quot;<p>There might be some influence - for example, someone born with genetic immunological defects is likely to be more susceptible to various infectious diseases, and there might be some kind of brain development issue that means that some people are less able to cope with high levels of stress, disappointment, trauma and so on - but the claim that this outcome is somehow ordained at birth is nonsensical.<p>All in all, the science of mental disorders today could be compared to the science of infectious disease in say, 1890 - they didn&#x27;t have much in the way of understanding of core mechanisms, even if some approaches (surgical sterilization, rigorous post-operative hygiene, etc.) were being shown to reduce mortality.<p>Probably the most promising tools in this regard are the use of psychedelics under controlled settings to improve outcomes, but even here, the research is basically in its infancy due to the socio-governmental paranoia over these substances.