What Patients Need to Know: The Chemical Imbalance Theory Was Never Actually Proven
Let’s start with the obvious. For many, the current model of mental health treatment is not working.
Science — and humanity in general — is meant to evolve. Treatments and medicine — and life in general — are iterative.
We are always learning, building a better way off of the back of what came before. For this reason, I can say with certainty that our current model of mental health in the U.S. has run its course.
We’ve medicalized what is often a very sane response to an insane world. We’ve prescribed pills for loneliness, pathologized spiritual crises, and monetized our misery under a glammed up banner of self-care.
Most shockingly, most of my patients aren’t aware that the chemical imbalance theory — the idea that depression, anxiety and the like are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, and that rebalancing those chemicals with pharmaceutical interventions is the complete answer — was never actually proven.
An article from the National Library of Medicine states:
“Journal articles [ 6], press releases, ads [ 18], drug inserts, and research informed consent documents say, or infer, that psychological diagnoses are abnormalities/diseases. All patients and research participants with psychological problems are led to believe they have an abnormality/disease, biasing them in favor of medical interventions, and against nonmedical interventions (e.g., love, will power, or talk therapy), which presume, as is the case, that the individual is physically and medically normal and without need of a medical/pharmaceutical intervention.)
(Some research and additional information, for the nerds like me, can be found here, here and here)
If you’re not thriving under this model, it’s not because you’re broken or “treatment-resistant” (goodness, that term!). It’s because you’re still alive somewhere underneath it. And that part of you—that still-wild, still-wise part—is beginning to whisper (or scream): There has to be another way.
There is. The future of mental health doesn’t lie in more clinical diagnoses, fancier therapy acronyms, or the latest mindfulness app designed by a bro who biohacks his serotonin. It lies in three deceptively simple directions:
Nature.
Neighbors.
Novelty.
Let’s break it down.
1. Nature: The Original Healer
Before you were a client in a therapist’s office, you were a child lying in the grass, talking to the sky. Nature is not a backdrop. It is the origin story. The therapist. The medicine. For thousands of years, healing took place under open skies and sacred trees. Illness wasn’t seen as a personal failure—it was a sign of disconnection. From the land, from the body, from spirit.
Then came fluorescent lighting, medicalization and being sent to strangers to share your deepest, most sensitive thoughts and feelings.
Today, we diagnose a person with “seasonal depression” instead of asking why we’ve built entire lives cut off from the sun. We sit in front of blue screens for 10 hours and wonder why we’re anxious. We pave over every wild thing and call it progress—then medicate the grief that follows.
The future of mental health will look less like a psychiatrist’s office and more like a return to land-based practices: forest bathing, barefoot grounding, ritual bathing in rivers, sitting in stillness with the elements.
This is not woo. This is neurology, ancestry, and soul in conversation.
Indigenous wisdom, which Western psychology is just beginning to catch up with, has always understood that healing is not just a mental act—it is a bio-psycho-social AND - spiritual one, enacted in relationship with the earth.
2. Neighbors: Healing Happens in Connection
Let me say something controversial: You do not need more “me time.”
You need we time—the kind of connection that softens your nervous system just by existing. The kind that tells your body, you’re safe now. The kind that comes not from scrolling or isolating, but from showing up for and with friends, even when you’re in pajamas and deeply unmotivated.
We are mammals. Co-regulation is biology, not weakness.
Yet somewhere along the way, American culture decided that needing other people is embarrassing. We turned rugged individualism into a badge of honor. We normalized hustle and glorified being “fine” as long as you’re productive.
From my place in the world as someone who partners with others so they can heal and thrive, this breaks my heart.
The real medicine is found in eye contact. In a warm hug. In someone remembering your dog’s name. In soup dropped on your doorstep without fanfare. The future of mental health is neighbors, not professionals. And I say this as a professional in the wellness space.
It’s not to say therapy doesn’t have a role (it absolutely does), but the fantasy that we can outsource all of our healing to 50-minute slots while remaining emotionally starved in real life? That’s the illness.
Communal care is not a luxury. It’s a necessity. The future isn’t more “mental health influencers.” It’s more elders. More circles. More potlucks. More people being witnessed not because they’re “working on themselves,” but because they’re alive—and therefore already worthy of love and belonging.
3. Novelty: Rewire, Rewild, Remember
Let’s talk about your brain for a second.
Your brain is a pattern-making machine. It loves predictability. It’s also, unfortunately, an incredible host for ruminating thoughts, identity loops, and beliefs formed in childhood that are still driving the car — chaotically swerving around the streets like a 7 year-old who stole his parent’s keys.
Enter novelty—the most underutilized mental health intervention of our time.
When we break from routine, even briefly, we disrupt those well-worn neural pathways and open the door to neuroplasticity—your brain’s ability to change, adapt, and expand.
This is why travel can feel so invigorating. Why dance class lifts your mood. Why psychedelics (in safe, intentional containers) can change lives. They invite the nervous system to loosen its grip on survival and consider—just consider—that joy, possibility, and presence might also be valid options.
Novelty doesn’t have to be dramatic. Cook something new. Walk a different street. Say yes when you usually say no (my most precious lesson learned during my 16 months spend living nomadically). Let awe find you, however small. These micro-interruptions accumulate, and soon you’re no longer living the same day over and over again. You’re living a life.
The future of mental health invites you to reclaim your imagination, not just recover from your past. It’s not about symptom management. It’s about soul expansion.
So Where Are We Headed?
We are moving—at a glacial but progressive pace—toward a model of healing that is less about managing pathology and more about reclaiming vitality.
A model that says:
• Come back to the land.
• Come back to each other.
• Come back to yourself.
This is the future of mental health. And it’s ancient. It’s simple. Most of it is free. So no, you’re not crazy for feeling like the current system doesn’t work. You’re just remembering something much deeper than social conditioning and well-marketed products.
Call it what you want: a rebellion, a return, a revolution. Just know this—you’re not alone.
And you were never meant to do this alone.
Now take your shoes off under the sky, call a friend, and go do something weird. Your healing/life/joy is waiting.
