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Published September 29, 2025

Connecting through Closed Doors

Learning to embrace the beauty, complexity, and humanity of mental health research.
“In the last year of high school, my friend had trouble waking up from her alarms. We both know it was hypersomnia from depression, but we never talked about it. We just made an arrangement—every morning I’d knock on her door to wake her up.”“A light cough (from the communal bathroom). Shuffle (might be the neighbor). Bed springs squeaking lightly (could be her). Door slams (down the hallway). Some days she answered, some days she did not.”“I still remember the smell of varnish on her door. Five years later, I am in a neuroscience lab doing depression-related work. I thought it would make me feel closer to her, but most days I don’t. Usually it feels like trying to piece together a puzzle made of sand.”“And how could I not feel this way? In the short history of scientific inquiry into mental health, we have already ran into so many dead ends. Thirty years ago, depression research focused heavily on the serotonin theory, which attributed the cause of depression to low serotonin levels in the brain. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter involved in regulating mood, cognition, learning, and other functions. Clinicians used it to explain depression to patients, drug developers made drugs to boost serotonin levels, and educators added it to textbooks and public research.”“But the theory turned out to be a huge oversimplification. Even though SSRIs work for many, we now know that serotonin is only a piece of a far more complicated picture. And even after all the breakthroughs in genetics, neuroimaging, and artificial intelligence, current neuropsychiatric drugs are still arguably no more effective than those discovered by accident fifty years ago.”“So maybe it’s not unreasonable to wonder if my work is going down another wrong path. If, at some point down the line, we’ll also look back and think, “how naive we were.” If mental illness is even a question that can be addressed by neuroscience. Hope feels unjustified when reality is so complicated.”“And it’s all so—” a word balloon interrupts the narration, “Joyce? Have a minute?” Joyce responds, stuttering, “Yes!” The two people discuss; as the visitor leaves they say “I’ll email relevant papers!” Joyce receives an email.“But sometimes, hope feels justified. I feel it when I read of those who questioned the serotonin theory even at its most popular, or remember that mental health research is not just one door opened or closed, but a vast, multidimensional, ever-changing landscape.”“After all, science doesn’t move in straight lines. It spirals, splits, recombines. I am still trying to find my way in this labyrinth."“While I often find myself lost in the complexities, it helps to keep the big picture in mind,”“that mental health research is for humans, by humans—we study the cells, circuits, networks, diagnostics, in order to understand each other, and to bridge all that lies between us.”

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