By David Stephen
The most important objective of any publication that is dedicated to psychiatry is the question of how psychiatry conspicuously moves forward, especially in an era of burgeoning AI mental health therapists.
It does not matter if the publication is mainstream or not, anti-psychiatry or not, publishes frequently or not, the justification for existence, in psychiatry, a field that stretches mental disorders and addictions, that both remain unknown and intractable, is that can there be answers that close in against the conditions?
Are Psychiatric Times the past or future?
There is no psychiatric publication anywhere in the world today, critical or conformist, that has made any major conceptual leap, in brain science, towards understanding psychiatric disorders.
Nothing else matters, including publication mandate, if there are no aggressive efforts into answering unknowns about the brain, postulating for possibilities against mental disorders and addictions.
If this standard is used to assess MJH Life Sciences Psychiatric Times, it is a failed channel, with no particular relevance for advancement in the field.
Psychiatric Times is a 41-year-old publication, with the current Editor-in-Chief, John J. Miller, MD, at the helm in the last six. But there is nothing at all that they have contributed in four decades that indisputable progress in brain science owes them.
There is nothing reputable about preserving credibility that cannot solve indispensable problems in a field in want. There are often so many tangential posts on Psychiatric Times that the question is often like, do they really know that no one knows what mental health is, are they just unserious, or is prevaricating an editorial policy? They don’t even meet the bar for trying enough, given that they supposedly have authority on their own turf.
Are they comfortable that the field does not have answers and they just keep publishing because they must? Have they given up and just coasting as professional lame duck? How much should they be pressing on components in the brain and postulating at mechanisms?
For example, what exactly is schizophrenia in the brain? Or, any other mental illness? What is an addiction to a substance? How is it different from addiction to an algorithm? What exactly is addiction in the brain?
There are at least three options to properly answer these questions, given empirically-supported evidence in neuroscience. Neurons, then their electrical signals and chemical signals. So, whatever must be described about how mental disorders or addictions work, should be connected with neurons and their electrical and chemical signals.
Now, since neurons are cell, and do not have enough flexibility or ability to change that much to structure all the functions of mind, therefore it is possible to assume that the mind is the combination of electrical and chemical signals.
Also, because neurons are in clusters, electrical and chemical signals can be said to be in sets [or loops] across clusters. This is where they mechanize functions, directly, nothing else, conceptually.
Though genes have an effect, genes are still not the human mind. So, they must influence electrical and chemical signals. If it is said that social, economic and environment issues affect mental health, it should be known that what mechanizes that, at least conceptually, are electrical and chemical signals. When there is an episode in a disorder, what to track for contrast — from when there is no episode — are the electrical and chemical signals.
It can be postulated that in a set, electrical and chemical signals interact, and there are states that they are, at the time of the interactions that decide the extents. This is how they organize information, labeled as memory, feeling, emotions and regulation of internal signals. It is the interactions and attributes of electrical and chemical signals that can be used to conceptually explain all mental disorders.
This is where the next procession for progress is for psychiatry. Simply, what does neuroscience have, for now, that can be used to describe all mental disorders in a way that at least removes them from being totally perplexing?
No psychiatric publication has tried. And Psychiatric Times, with their frequency of publication have not. The answers sought for psychiatry are in the brain, so what must they be, what other option, linked with neurons, has not been exhausted?
This is where lots of efforts should go. Not just do nothing useful, writing totally disconnected articles, with no bearing on progress.
John J. Miller, MD has job security and Psychiatric Times generates revenue for MJH Life Sciences. They have no need to adjust or listen. They are also prestigious and appear to know it all. But every time, the victims of lack of answers from psychiatry continue to embarrass their prestige.
There is a recent [April 21, 2026] report in USA Today, Shreveport massacre shocked Americans. Why do parents kill their kids?, stating that, “Fatal maltreatment. In these cases, the child has often been a victim of chronic abuse or neglect, she said.”
“Unwanted child. Babies, especially after an unwanted or hidden pregnancy, are at the greatest risk.”
“Partner revenge. An impending break-up, infidelity, or a custody battle might be present. In these cases, “the father or mother is trying to punish, or emotionally harm, the other parent,” Hatters Friedman said. “They are seeing the child as a pawn.””
“Acutely psychotic. This motive is sometimes also known as an “altruistic” killing, in which the parent is severely depressed and has “developed delusions that something worse than death is going to happen to their child,” she said.””
David Stephen currently does research in conceptual brain science with focus on the electrical and chemical configurators for how they mechanize the human mind with implications for mental health, disorders, neurotechnology, consciousness, learning, artificial intelligence and nurture. He was a visiting scholar in medical entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL. He did computer vision research at Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona.
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