• Question: @Richard Do you think that there will ever be a cure to mental illness

    Asked by GiraffeChlolo to Cristiane, Nikolai, Richard, Samuel on 18 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Nikolai Adamski

      Nikolai Adamski answered on 18 Mar 2015:


      Scientists are working to understand the human brain, e.g. The human brain project (https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en_GB) . Just like traditional medicine can cure more and more physical illnesses by understanding the human body, so will knowing more about the human brain help us in curing mental illnesses.
      Mental illnesses are taken seriously by our modern society (they were often ridiculed not too long ago), so for me it’s just a question of time until we understand the human brain enough to start curing mental illnesses.

    • Photo: Richard Simons

      Richard Simons answered on 18 Mar 2015:


      Yes, though it may take a long time and I doubt it’ll be simple.

      Unfortunately the idea of researching mental illness is relatively new (much newer than physical medicine), and we still know very little about the causes of many diseases. However, there’s been a recent surge in awareness of mental health issues and a lot more research is being conducted – the more we know, the more we can fix; it may just take a while for us to get there.

      Maybe you’ll be one of the scientists developing the treatments of the future!

    • Photo: Samuel Ellis

      Samuel Ellis answered on 18 Mar 2015:


      A lot of progress has been made in mental health recently, and we are certainly better at taking it more seriously than previous generations. It is a very complicated topic though, and often does not have a direct solution like physical illnesses.

      I am sure we will get a lot better at treating mental illnesses in the future, but I imagine they will still occur sometimes because the brain is such a complicated organ with many ways to go wrong!

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