Review of the Broken Brain: The Biological Revolution in Psychiatry by Nancy Andreasen

The author of this book is listed among well-known psychotherapists, such as Freud, Milgram, Skinner, Gillian, and Ward et al... accepted and classified as a foremost thinker based on her honesty about areas where medical therapy and mental illness demonstrate incongruence, as in some depression cases she worked with. While being well aware of social disapproval that contributes to the death of a depressed medical doctor, she relied heavily on her medical training with the compassionate third hand.

She is knowledgeable in pharmacology and familiar with side-effects from different medications as her cases prove in chapter eight and nine illustrating that psychiatry is starting to make the greatest shift. She offers a bold avenue for ambition to manifest beneficially. As a leading neuroscientist, she will help conquer mental illness. This becomes the moral cornerstone in any argument for the physical nature of mental illness that Dr. Andreasen knows from the inside out. She insists that the internist be as careful as the analyst when carefully diagnosing each specific illness the patient suffers from.

The book is an excellent source of information on the anatomy and the pathology of mental illness yet there is discrepancy in understanding the true nature of mental illness. It is said to have derived from the fallacy that mental illness is 'all in ones mind'. Symptomology is conclusive as long as biological conditions are able to be reliably measured. Some mental illnesses, due to physical abnormalities such as enlargement of the ventricles or hemispheres or atrophy in particular regions of the organ, are exclusively pathological, others are not. The rest is the mental and spiritual condition of the patient before, during and after the diagnosis has been rendered. What kind of shape we are in and what kind of life we have grown accustomed to thus far is crucial in determining the specific causes of this disease. Schizophrenia reasonably affects both the psychological and physical growth of its sufferer unless it is viewed from a different angle.

The angle offering the most concrete answers is the biological model. It combines both structure and function of the brain in relation to emotions, behavior and cognition in order to make for a legitimate diagnosis. This model eases the confusion a doctor might experience when attempting to match treatment to a benevolent prognosis. In medicine, the focus is on identifying and providing treatment of a particular illness, therefore the biological model clears a lot of despair simply by giving the ailment a name and the patient piece of mind. Through this model the chemical properties are addressed and validated through several series of tests I feel are quite conducive to the efforts made by psychiatrists of yesterday and ones beginning practice today.

I read the book twice, first with just pure attention to flow, topic, words used, feelings evoked; the second time I looked for specific answers to specific questions about this syndrome and I was satisfied with my findings. It is quite personal but not out of league for the average emotionless person, it does tug the heartstring and we all have one. The sick or broken brain is not brought on by laziness, a weakened will, negative character choices, or malevolent influences from authority figures throughout childhood and adolescence. The Broken Brain is simply disconnected from and between the systems but not entirely so disorganized and shattered that fixing it should ever be considered, 'a waste of time'.