A few days back a friend from a non-psychology background sent me a reel. It was a video of Neil DeGrasse Tyson on a podcast with Joe Rogan making some predictions for the year 2050. The top prediction Tyson made was claiming that,
By the year 2050, neuroscience and our understanding of mental illness will be so advanced so that mental illness will be cured leaving psychologists and psychiatrists without jobs.
Tyson is not the first person to make this prediction and he won’t be the last either. When the MRI machines came up in the 80s and 90s, it seemed certain that the brain would be completely mapped out and we wouldn’t need psychologists anymore.
Why talk to someone about their mental issues when we can cure them at the level of the brain, right?
Turns out, even as far back as 1845AD, the association between the brain and mental disorders was being discussed.
Willhelm Greisinger, sometimes called the ‘father of modern neuropsychiatry’ claimed in 1845 that
classification of mental diseases according to their nature—that is, according to the anatomical changes of the brain which lie at their foundation—is, at the present time, impossible
178 years on, we are nowhere closer to a classification of mental disorders based on anatomical changes in the brain.
It is this lack of progress that makes me skeptical about mental illness being cured anytime soon, especially within the next 27 years. But we can hope.
But this also begs a bigger question, can mental disorders ever become brain disorders?
That is, will there ever be a time when psychology will simply become a branch of neurology/neuroscience instead of being a separate but related field.
I don’t think so.
Here is why. This might get a bit complicated but I promise it will be worth the effort.
Physical and Mental Disorders
There are somethings fundamentally different between physical and mental disorders. If we want mental disorders to transform into physical (brain) ones, a lot would need to happen beforehand.
When you get a fever, it is the immune system of your body releasing certain chemicals which increases the temperature of your body. The fever is an attempt by the body to literally “fry” the infectious elements that have entered your body.
You will notice that we have a very neat chain of cause and events in the physical realm when it comes to something of a disorder. Some immune cells identify an infection, other parts try to fight it off, some of them release pyrites to give you a fever.
Things are a bit different when it comes to mental disorders though.
Is It The Mind or The Brain?
Mental disorders are disorders of a person’s thoughts, emotions and behaviours. In short, they are the disorders of a person’s psychology. You might think that isn’t everything that is psychological naturally biological since it HAS to originate in the brain?
Not quite.
See the brain is very complex. We don’t know anything major about how it works so far. There are people out there who live with only half a brain (!!) and overtly you would not be able to tell the difference between them and another “normal” person.
Think about it this way, sometimes people have passive strokes which deforms a certain part of the brain BUT these people rarely show any overt symptoms in their behaviour/emotions/thoughts.
Would this person be considered disordered? If yes, would it be fair to say they have a mental disorder even though there has been no change in their mental state?
The Brain Is Influenced By The Environment
Another thing about mental disorders is that they are often determined by our social and economic surroundings.
Think of a Zomato rider. He has to work for long hours in tough conditions for a low wage. If he were to visit a doctor with complaints of meaninglessness, hopelessness and constant fatigue, a diagnosis of depression would be valid, but is it fair to say that it is only because it is his “brain malfunctioning”?
The brain is effected by our social surroundings and what kind of effect our environment has on the brain differs by our class, our language and even our education level.
The Brain is Heterogenous
The brain, in all its complexities, raises us another complexity. All brains work in different ways. These ways are determined by the connections we made when we were kids, what experiences we had and what our diet consisted of among other things.
This means that there is a large variation (heterogeneity) in all brains. Take the example of schizophrenia. The role of dopamine has been implicated in development of schizophrenia across cultures and years but there is again the problem of heterogeneity.
There are some brains where schizophrenia develops with high dopamine activity, there are others where it develops with low dopamine activity. It almost seems impossible to find singular causes for emotional/thought distortions.
This problem does not seem like it will be fixed anytime soon, mostly because it is not a bug it is a feature of human brains. They are meant to be adaptable, and different brains adapt to different things based on what they are exposed to.
Should Psychologists Be Worried?
From my point of view, I don’t think so. There is huge gulf between what we know about the brain right now and what we need to know before we say that mental disorders have been “cured” or that they are no longer “mental” disorders.
Sure, disorders like epilepsy and Parkinson’s have moved into the domain of neurology in modern times but I believe it will take a long time before we reach a point where even thought/mood disorders are under the purview of neuroscience.
The debate between physicalism (brain disorders) and psychological realism (mental disorders) flares up every few decades when a new technological advancement is made. The growing popularity of neuroscience is no different.
Eventually, in a few years, I believe there will be a call for more cooperation between folks in psychology/psychiatry, neuroscience and social work to better understand the mechanism influencing the human brain.
I believe psychiatry is actually already ahead of the curve in doing so. Let’s see when others catch up.
And that is it for the week! I hope it didn’t get too complicated. I tried my best to keep away from technical jargon and theoretical concepts. In a poll I had done on my LinkedIn profile, ~50% said they don’t think mental disorders are brain disorders but they struggled to back up their claims.
I hope this piece helps you understand why (I am guessing) your guess was appropriate.
If you have any thoughts that came up while reading this, I would love to hear them. The border between psychology and neuroscience has always been a fascinating one for me.
Until next time,
Arjun
Hello sir. I am trying make sense of it but it is very difficult of me to agree onto your argument that 'everything psychological need not necessarily be biological' (if i haven't read it wrong).
1. In the example of people living a normal life with brain damage, aren't the functioning of the damage area taken over by neighboring area of the brain (though not in all cases)
2. In the example of depression, doesn't depression have biochemical reason too.
In my opinion, i think all psychological disorders do have biological basis (discovered or undiscovered as of now) but however, treatment at psychological level can help in treatment of the disorders from the root.