For the American Psychiatric Association to assert that ”mental illiness like physical diseases has nothing to do with . . . will power or morality”
(”Mind pollution” Ronald Kotulak, May 13), is to make an unsubstantiated and therefore unscientific statement.
Some of those at the forefront of mind-brain research (C. Sherrington, J. Eccles, R. Sperry) have come to the conclusion that there is a radical distinction between the brain and the mind, that conscious experience is different in kind from any goings on in the neuronal machinery even though events in the latter are a necessary condition for the former, and that ethical and moral values are a very legitimate part of brain science and themselves exert powerful causal influence in brain function and behavior.
Mr. Kotulak even cites Dr. Klerman of the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center as saying that social forces, stress and values (family) may affect mental health.
