BLAMING THE BRAIN The ‘Chemical Imbalance’ Fraud

“There's no biological imbalance. When people come to me and they say, ‘I have a biochemical imbalance,’ I say, ‘Show me your lab tests.’ There are no lab tests. So what’s the biochemical imbalance?”
— Dr. Ron Leifer New York psychiatrist

The cornerstone of psychiatry’s disease model today is the theory that a brain-based, chemical imbalance causes mental illness. Popularized by marketing, the notion is no more than psychiatric wishful thinking. As with all of psychiatry’s mental “disease” models, it has been thoroughly discredited by researchers, psychiatrists, psychologists and medical doctors.

Diabetes is a biochemical imbalance. However, “the definitive test and biochemical imbalance is a high blood sugar balance level. Treatment in severe cases is insulin injections, which restore sugar balance. The symptoms clear and retest shows the blood sugar is normal,” said Joseph Glenmullen of Harvard Medical School. “Nothing like a sodium imbalance or blood sugar imbalance exists for depression or any other psychiatric syndrome.”

In 2002, Dr. Thomas Szasz, professor of psychiatry emeritus, stated: “There is no blood or other biological test to ascertain the presence or absence of a mental illness, as there is for most bodily diseases. If such a test were developed (for what, theretofore, had been considered a psychiatric illness), then the condition would cease to be a mental illness and would be classified, instead, as a symptom of a bodily disease.”

In his book, The Complete Guide to Psychiatric Drugs, published in 2000, Edward Drummond, M.D., Associate Medical Director at Seacoast Mental Health Center in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, stated, “First, no biological etiology [cause] has been proven for any psychiatric disorder … in spite of decades of research. … So don’t accept the myth that we can make an ‘accurate diagnosis’. … Neither should you believe that your problems are due solely to a ‘chemical imbalance.’”

Bruce Levine, Ph.D., psychologist and author of Commonsense Rebellion concurs: “Remember that no biochemical, neurological, or genetic markers have been found for attention deficit disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, depression, schizophrenia, anxiety, compulsive alcohol and drug abuse, overeating, gambling, or any other so-called mental illness, disease, or disorder.”

Elliot Valenstein, Ph.D., author of Blaming the Brain, is unequivocal: “[T]here are no tests available for assessing the chemical status of a living person’s brain.”

Psychiatrist David Kaiser said, “…[M]odern psychiatry has yet to convincingly prove the genetic/biologic cause of any single mental illness. … Patients [have] been diagnosed with ‘chemical imbalances’ despite the fact that no test exists to support such a claim, and … there is no real conception of what a correct chemical balance would look like.”

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