In: Psychology
How come despite spending billions of dollars pharmaceutical companies are not able to find 'the magic bullet' to cure mental disorders?
(Note: your response must focus only on the biological/anatomical/physiological aspects. Any response that is based on social/economic factors will not be accepted. In the past some students focused on expressing views on how evil the pharmaceutical companies are and they deliberately refuse to find the magic bullet because it is not in their economic interest. Those students received score of zero for this RT)
Magic Bullet concept was out forward by Paul Ehlrich in 1900s. He defined it as substances or chemicals which can specifically kill microorganisms and target them to cure diseases.
He also discovered Salvarasan the first drug to cure Syphilis.
Now despite the concept being known to mankind for many years and billions of dollars spent on research there are no such magic bullets for mental disorders.
Reasons
1 Psychiatric disorders are complex multifactorial disorders. They are not caused by a microorganism.
2 They are caused by gene environment interaction and influenced by cultural factors so targeting only one thing is not possible and wont yield results.
3 concept of complete cure doesnt exist at present as these illnesses are exaggeration or decrease of normal human behaviours. Completely eliminating these behaviours may also be seen as a problem.
4 Lastly the biological basis of these disorders is often poorly understood.