Medical science has done an excellent job of brainwashing modern society into accepting the belief that most if not all of our mental and psychological problems stem from some form of faulty brain development or chemistry, and that the solution lies in finding some drug or medication to alleviate the problem. Of course, they never claim to be able to cure such problems, they are merely sometimes able to suppress the annoying symptoms so that someone is not a burden to society. The latest such miracle drug, which is prescribed freely by some practitioners at even the slightest indication of depression, boredom, anger, or simple unhappiness with one's life, is called Prozac.
There is a doctor in the Midwest who prescribes Prozac to virtually every person who walks in his door. When a mother came in to complain that he had prescribed Prozac to her otherwise normal teenage son, he recommended in no uncertain terms that she needed Prozac also.
Fortunately, recent research has revealed by means of brain scans that although Prozac can actually restore what is considered to be normal brain function in some types of mental disorders, the same has been shown to be true of what is called cognitive therapy, which is basically an approach to teaching the patient how to deal more effectively with his or her own thought patterns. (And the only such non-drug approach tested so far.) What this means is that instead of having to take a powerful drug with possible dangerous side effects for the rest of one's life, one can instead learn how to use one's mind properly, and permanently deal with the problem in a way that is much more personally satisfying and life affirming. One approach keeps you sick and mentally defective for the rest of your life, the other enhances your ability to control your own life.
This also indicates that medical mental science has been engaging in a classic logical error called post hoc, ergo propter hoc which means "after, therefore because of." Because they have found abnormal brain activity in people with mental problems, they have assumed that the problems are caused by the abnormal brain activity. But as these recent studies indicate, it is much more likely that these persons have developed abnormal brain activity because of the way they have learned to use their minds, through the way they were brought up.
Just as we can be taught to speak and act strangely if we are raised poorly, just as we can harm our bodies by eating deficient food or by exercising insufficiently or incorrectly, so too can we be taught harmful mental habits. The result is a brain that functions improperly. Fortunately, just as we can learn to correct our use of language and ways of dealing with people, to eat and exercise properly, so too can we learn the proper care and use of our minds. This has been the claim of teachers of meditation for thousands of years, and finally even medical science has begun to recognize the importance of this claim in dealing with a whole range of what were previously thought to be purely medical problems, including stress, heart disease, depression, cancer, and now a host of so-called mental problems. - Robert