Why It's Better to Have a Mind Than a Brain
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Thus, depression has a large circular component of response and habit. A person learns to respond to ordinary situations by being depressed, and once learned, this response becomes a habit that reinforces itself. The habit of depression is as hard to break as addiction. And in both cases one hears the cry: "I can't help it. I have to be this way. This is me." Telling someone that they are prisoners of their sick or damaged brains only reinforces this belief and the circle of depression.
Those who focus on the brain seem to be right that habitual responses form neural pathways that constantly reinforce the same depressed reaction. These pathways are like ruts in the road that a wagon wheel falls into automatically. But brain researchers are misguided to ignore the mind. That's like saying that the road made its own ruts.
I've said enough to provoke scorn from the materialists and outrage among some depressed people, who accuse me of saying that they have caused their condition. I am robbing them of hope. I am saying nothing of the sort, however. Severe depression requires medical treatment of the most intensive kind. Millions of people testify that antidepressants have relieved their suffering. Nobody is trying to counter such testimony. Nobody is offering despair in place of hope.
But the research that has undermined antidepressants cannot be wished away. In many ways, the brain has been a cop-out for the therapeutic community. Instead of undertaking long, expensive cognitive therapy that tries to get to the bottom of why a person is depressed, how much easier is it to write a prescription? This despite the fact that talk therapy has proven to work in cases of mild to moderate depression. But Prozac, the first billion-dollar drug, seemed to cut the Gordian knot.
Going the route of antidepressants, behind all the hype and the millions spent by drug companies to boost their products, was always far from perfect. There were side effects. There was drug tolerance, which causes a medication to become less effective over time. There was the stark reality that antidepressants only relieve symptoms; they were never a cure. Finally, the same research that undermined the efficacy of antidepressants also found that taking them doesn't aid with other therapies used at the same time.
I'm not deliberately painting a dismal picture. The drug route leads to its own dead end (discounting, once again, those who are actually helped). Let's keep exploring the use of psychotropic medications. It would be naive to believe that America is going to abandon a belief system that puts materialism ahead of everything else. But discounting the mind while constantly referring everything to the brain is folly. It defies common sense, for reasons we will go into in the next post.
Keep Reading
How to be your own placebo
The placebo effect: How to use your mind-body connection for healing
Deepak Chopra is the author of more than 50 books on health, success, relationships and spirituality, including his current best-seller, Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul, and The Ultimate Happiness Prescription, which are available now. You can listen to his show on Saturdays every week on SiriusXM Channels 102 and 155.
Those who focus on the brain seem to be right that habitual responses form neural pathways that constantly reinforce the same depressed reaction. These pathways are like ruts in the road that a wagon wheel falls into automatically. But brain researchers are misguided to ignore the mind. That's like saying that the road made its own ruts.
I've said enough to provoke scorn from the materialists and outrage among some depressed people, who accuse me of saying that they have caused their condition. I am robbing them of hope. I am saying nothing of the sort, however. Severe depression requires medical treatment of the most intensive kind. Millions of people testify that antidepressants have relieved their suffering. Nobody is trying to counter such testimony. Nobody is offering despair in place of hope.
But the research that has undermined antidepressants cannot be wished away. In many ways, the brain has been a cop-out for the therapeutic community. Instead of undertaking long, expensive cognitive therapy that tries to get to the bottom of why a person is depressed, how much easier is it to write a prescription? This despite the fact that talk therapy has proven to work in cases of mild to moderate depression. But Prozac, the first billion-dollar drug, seemed to cut the Gordian knot.
Going the route of antidepressants, behind all the hype and the millions spent by drug companies to boost their products, was always far from perfect. There were side effects. There was drug tolerance, which causes a medication to become less effective over time. There was the stark reality that antidepressants only relieve symptoms; they were never a cure. Finally, the same research that undermined the efficacy of antidepressants also found that taking them doesn't aid with other therapies used at the same time.
I'm not deliberately painting a dismal picture. The drug route leads to its own dead end (discounting, once again, those who are actually helped). Let's keep exploring the use of psychotropic medications. It would be naive to believe that America is going to abandon a belief system that puts materialism ahead of everything else. But discounting the mind while constantly referring everything to the brain is folly. It defies common sense, for reasons we will go into in the next post.
Keep Reading
How to be your own placebo
The placebo effect: How to use your mind-body connection for healing
Deepak Chopra is the author of more than 50 books on health, success, relationships and spirituality, including his current best-seller, Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul, and The Ultimate Happiness Prescription, which are available now. You can listen to his show on Saturdays every week on SiriusXM Channels 102 and 155.
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