
Robert F. Shedinger, author of The Mystery of Evolutionary Mechanisms: Darwinian Biology’s Grand Narrative of Triumph and the Subversion of Religion talks about how mental problems have become physicalized:
Darwinian naturalism leads to the conclusion that even an immaterial entity like the human mind must exist only as a side effect of biochemical processes occurring in a physical brain. All conscious experience then must have a physical cause, including the painful conscious experiences we label mental illness. Darwinian naturalism has underwritten the development of the medical model of mental illness over the last forty years and the consequences for those who suffer mental and emotional disturbances could not be more significant.
One positive outcome of this medical model was expected to be a reduction in mental health stigma. If mental illness is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain (an idea for which there is no scientific evidence, by the way), sufferers should not experience stigma any more than would sufferers of a physical illness like cancer or diabetes. But as documented by psychologist Philip T. Yanos in Written Off: Mental Health Stigma and the Loss of Human Potential (2018), the opposite has occurred. The medical model has increased self-stigma as sufferers come to see themselves as physically compromised and destined to a lifetime of disability and medication. Moreover, spiritual, economic, and social issues that may stand at the root of many experiences of anxiety and depression are at best marginalized in the therapeutic relationship and at worst ignored altogether, much to the detriment of patients. Fortunately, there is beginning to be strong push back against the medical model from within both psychiatry and psychology.
Robert F. Shedinger, “What’s at Stake in the Debate over Darwinism?” at Evolution News and Science Today
There is, of course, more to the story of what goes wrong but honestly doubting the existence of one’s mind is a good start.
See also: Post-modern science: The illusion of consciousness sees through itself
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