🔴 WATCH THE FULL EPISODE: https://ept.ms/4qpXL9aShow more We’re approaching mental health all wrong, argues professor David Cohen.
We’re told mental illness is “a disease like any other.” Yet no stethoscope, no physical exam, no bloodwork, no scans. Diagnosis is just a questionnaire — and the solution is almost always a prescription.
But if it’s a disease, why don’t we treat it like one?
A real medical workup would start by ruling out infection, metabolic disorders, autoimmune issues, brain tumors — and if none are found, we shouldn’t leap to “it’s all in the brain.”
“Don't keep saying it's a physical disease, and we need medicine for it,” says Cohen, professor of social welfare and associate dean at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. Show less
Recently, an official, a high official in Health and Human Services not so long ago asked me, what's the best way to treat mental illness?
And I didn't, my answer is not relevant.
It's what I should have answered.
I didn't quite answer it exactly.
I should have answered that the best way to treat mental illness is to first rule out medical physical illness.
First rule out that the person does not have an infection, some kind of metabolic problem, an undiagnosed brain tumor.
Rule out the physical that you say is really there, but you're never finding it.
It's so odd that we're convinced it's medical.
It's an illness like any other.
It's a disease like any other disease.
We have supposedly insurance parity for it.
Everything is like it, except where is the physical trace?
How come to diagnose it?
You have to look me in the eyes and see what's not on my lips, in my heart.
You have to have all these other theories, but to diagnose my tuberculosis, you don't even need to see me.
You just need an x-ray of my lungs.
What exactly is this disease that you don't even put your stethoscope on me?
In fact, you don't even shake my hands anymore.
You're just talking to me.
What kind of disease is diagnosed this way and is like any other disease?
It's obviously not like any other disease.
So rule out any other disease first.
Involve the medical in it this way.
And then if you cannot find the cause, you can keep searching for it, but don't put 99% of your energy saying, well, we know what the cause is.
It's physical.
We just haven't found it yet.
Enough is enough already.
Why don't you focus on what is the exact problem the person is first bringing?
And if you feel you need interpretation of that, well, then go get trained and become a psychoanalyst or a cognitive behaviorist or a humanist or a trauma specialist and dig into it.