People like Eric Berne, Thomas Szasz, and Robert Whitaker may have been prophets. Each writer and many others have tried to move the emphasis away from the biology and into the relationship for years.
Now, there will be a little murmur before we relax back into the comfort of medication. What is it about medication that makes us relax? Well, it means that there is a simple answer to a complex biosocial relational problem, a one stop shop, if you will, where everyone can get their symptoms relieved without the messy process of finding out what the problem is. In other words, treat the symptoms and not the illness.
Szasz called mental illness a myth. Berne said a person could get well rather than better. And Whitaker said that medication was overused and became ineffective over time. The new study appears to agree. When emotional health is a social/relational problem with a biological outcome, it changes everything.
Treating the person, their life experiences as if there is a pattern to their life begins a process of explaining how they can heal and what steps each individual needs to get well - not be symptom free.
Thanks to the National Institute of Mental Healthy for funding this study.