Messing about with the brain: a response to commentaries on ‘Depression: why electricity and drugs are not the answer’

Abstract

We thank all authors for the six commentaries on 'Depression: Why Drugs and Electricity are not the Answer' (Read & Moncrieff, 2022). We are sorry we cannot address all their points in the space available.Pariante quotes from Hippocrates: 'from the brain and from the brain only arise our pleasures, joys, laughter and jests as well as our sorrows, pains, grieves and tears' (Hippocrates goes on to suggest that madness arises from excessive 'moistness' of the brain). This biological reductionism is a contentious position that is central, with varying subtly, to the commentaries by Aftab et al., Meechan et al., Pariante, and Goldberg and Nasrallah, exemplified by the latter's description of depression as a 'potentially fatal brain syndrome'.

How does the first-person perspective relate to the third-person perspective?

“…For example, it enables us to move beyond observed correlations between first-person experiences and brain processes that have currently lead to assumptions such as how we represent the behavior of a vast assembly of neurons, as mentioned earlier, c and instead examine how changes in first-person experiences can influence changes other systems of interest (that c This matter also link to the currently dominant view (within mental health services and research) that sees mental disorders as diseases rooted in biology that are corrected by psychiatric drugs and other procedures, which is a topic around which there have been considerable controversy. 43 are typically investigated from the third-person perspective: such as changes in physiology or changes in organ systems such as the brain) -such understandings can illuminate mental-health related to research and interventions. Relating to this, a large body of evidence indicates that first-person experiences have a powerful influence on bringing about changes in the brain and physiological systems.…”