Despite vast amounts of research they do not know what is happening to the brains of the mentally ill. Over 50 years ago some drugs that were effective in relieving the symptoms of mental illness were discovered by accident. However, how these drugs work, the nature of the abnormal changes in the brain they correct and the causes of psychiatric illness remain a mystery.
Before these effective drugs were used, doctors relied on custodial care and sedation e.g. insulin comas, electric shock therapy and cutting the brains of patients. They hoped that the trauma would correct the brains malfunctioning.
→ Huge problems of using such methods (personality change, epilepsy)
→No improvement in patient’s conditions despite treatment lasting years. Emperor’s new clothes!
1953
Through non related experimentation came across chlorpromazine. The drug was used on patients with schizophrenia who after a few weeks on medication became symptom free.
Later over the next four years other major drugs were found applicable to the whole spectrum of psychiatric illness. (Lithium for manic depression, Antidepressants for depression and Benzodiazepines for anxiety.) All drugs were found by chance and doctors still have no idea how or why they work.
Chlorpromazine is not a cure for schizophrenia; the essence of the ‘euphoric quietude’ lessens the agitation making the patient more manageable and lessens the intensity of the distress of systems helping recovery. – “like a pain relief”
“The history of psychiatry in the post war years shows in a very dramatic form, how the growth of the possibilities of treating illness, could occur in the absence of any substantial understandings of the nature of the problem being treated or indeed why the treatment worked.” (p.71)
Post war psychiatry has been a ‘smashing success’, we don’t understand how the drugs work. The drugs were discovered accidentally and completely independently of any intellectual understanding of mental illness- However, they have huge benefits for those affected.
Economics
It is a real stab in the dark when trying to find a cure. The costs of R&D are substantial and with a small probability of success. Cost > Benefit???
However, it would be more costly not to increase our knowledge of mental illness. (Just look at what 50 years knowledge achieved.)
What incentives would a government, business or research institution have to discover more about mental illness? The patent rights of discovering a cure may be a large enough incentive.
If experimentation will be carried out on finding a cure for other health problems (large fixed costs), then there would be only a small variable cost attached to testing the new discoveries on mental illness
