“The neuro-essentialist discourse pushes aside this relationship by suggesting that academic and social failures, which are actually more frequent in disadvantaged children, result from their intrinsic neurodevelopmental dysfunctions of genetic origin” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7647424/

Among my deep existential crisis in neuroscience, one of them is the neuro-essentialist view of mental health. In many ways it has been very beneficial to reduce the stigma of mental health but recently it may have had another effect. /1

The extreme reductionist view of science prevents accountability of social factors that influence health and instead views genes or the brain as the culprit of diseases. Things are changing though and gene-brain-environment interactions are being more widely studied /2

I’m increasingly less convinced that studying the brain alone will improve mental health conditions. Without proper understanding and active change of social conditions, it’s likely that we won’t really be able to improve mental health /3