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Jan. 21, 2026 - Epoch Times
03:55
NIMH Director Admitted Billions in Research Didn’t Result in Better Mental Health Outcomes

🔴 WATCH THE FULL EPISODE: https://ept.ms/3Nxe1qoShow more Has the massive rollout of psychiatric drugs over recent decades actually led to better outcomes for patients? The evidence says no. Even former NIMH Director Thomas Insel admitted that despite overseeing ~$20 billion in neuroscience and genetics research during his 13-year tenure, clinical outcomes for patients did not improve. Recovery rates didn’t increase and hospitalization and suicide rates didn’t decrease. Yet instead of rethinking the approach, the field doubles down, says David Cohen, Professor for Social Welfare at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. “Since Insel left, the NIMH has doubled down on biological, so-called precision medicine genome [research]... They're going deeper into the infinite reality of our substrates, from one gene now to 300 gene variants that only explain 2% or 3% of what might be a liability for schizophrenia…The correlation with being schizophrenic gets smaller and smaller and smaller.” Cohen argues for a fundamental shift: What we label “mental illness” is often extraordinary despair, loss of hope, and inability to cope with life's tragedies. Families used to be the first line of defense in such situations, he told me, but this is no longer the case: “Our families today are everywhere else but close to us. As a rule, I think we've passed that halfway point where everyone's dispersed. So you're basically on your own.” And that’s why, he believes, our psychologists and psychiatrists must adopt a better model: Instead of immediately prescribing psychiatric drugs, spending time with patients, listening to them and their stories and enabling them, as he puts it, “to repair broken bonds.” Show less

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Time Text
Genetic Precision Fails 00:02:52
Anytime people have seriously looked at what the outcomes were prior to the large-scale introduction of the drugs, everyone who's looked at this seriously for a moment or two, including the former director of the NIMH, Tom Incel,
in 2008 and 9, he started to go around the country saying the outcomes are not getting good, and I've just spent $20 billion as a director on very cool projects looking inside the brain every which way but loose, and the needle has not moved.
So he himself already recognized it publicly, but no one is willing to take that observation and see, okay, what else could we do?
They're just saying we need to double down.
In fact, since Incel left, the NIMH has doubled down on biological, so-called precision medicine, genome, what have you.
They're going deeper into the infinite reality of our substrates.
From one gene now to 300 gene variants that only explain 2-3% of what might be a liability for schizophrenia, as I explained by the sample sizes and the studies get bigger from 20,000 to 300,000.
The number of loci, the place and the chromosome that might harbor a gene or a variant of a gene or so, those numbers get bigger and bigger, more hundreds.
But the number of explanation of why the correlation with being schizophrenic gets smaller and smaller and smaller.
So as I see it, it's kind of, it's been tested and it's failed.
It's just not been supported that we're dealing with a disease, according to the best thinking of what a disease could be.
What are we dealing with?
And what approaches look promising?
What looks promising?
I'd like to say, I feel like saying there's nothing new under the sun here.
This is just, you know, because you know and you've known the kinds of despair that people manifest when they're, when we call them mentally ill, seriously mentally ill, is something that's been described forever.
It's despair.
It's loss of hope.
It's self-destruction.
What's promising?
Human connection.
Human connection is the most promising, obviously, for durable, for a lasting effect on the serious tragedies, the so-called problems of living that Tom Saz 60 years ago said, that's what mental illness is.
Structures of Support 00:01:01
It's just this myth to make palatable, it's like a bitter pill, but it just makes palatable the tragedies of being alive and finding out how are we going to live and what are we going to do in these difficult situations.
So that what's promising is who do you have around you that can help you?
You know, your first line of defense has to be self-defense.
If that fails, what do you got?
Well, we go to family.
Our families today are everywhere else, but close to us, as a rule.
I think we've passed that halfway point where everyone's dispersed.
So you're basically on your own.
And a lot more is on your shoulders to figure out.
So you could just begin to see that what's promising is structures of people around you.
And if it's not people you know well, that are your kin or your neighbors or your fellow citizens or your fellow residents, then they're going to have to be credentialed people.
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