05/30/2026
Below is an excerpt from a longform piece I wrote last year on this topic
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For decades, we’ve been assured that mental illness is genetic in origin or the result of a chemical imbalance in the brain. Many of us have been told this by people in white coats. I was told this too, early in my own life and training. It was comforting, in a way. If my distress came from broken biology, then perhaps a pill or a protocol could fix it.
Here’s the reality: the theory of genetic causation has never been proven. No physical findings, blood tests, or brain scans can diagnose a mental disorder. As Maté notes, “There are no measurable physical markers of mental illness, other than the subjective or behavioral.” This absence of biological clarity has been acknowledged even by leading psychiatrists who have called for a broader philosophical foundation for the field (Kendler, 2005).
This doesn’t mean biology is irrelevant; it means biology is responsive, not deterministic. Yet the psychiatric field has long sought validation as a “hard science,” chasing the precision of laboratory medicine (Hyman, 2010). In 2013, when the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) was released, the chair of its task force, Dr. David Kupfer, admitted, “We’ve been telling patients for decades that we are waiting for biomarkers. We’re still waiting.”
Still waiting, and still prescribing, labeling, and pathologizing.
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You can read the whole piece titled, “We Are Not Broken: Rethinking Mental Health Through Trauma, Connection, and Epigenetics” on my substack. https://christiansnuffer.substack.com/