Beyond Mental Illness ― Transform the Labels Transform a Life

Can infections cause Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, Lou Gherig’s Disease and mental illness? Yes, but not just the infections. The body’s unique defense against these infections plays a role. This is but one of the startling facts uncovered in Moyer’s third book, Beyond Mental Illness. Moyer is a retired licensed clinical social worker with a lifetime of professional experience dealing with mental illness. He has been free to follow the research independent of the cultural limitations that might inhibit other investigators.

Moyer’s bipolar odyssey began with a novel exploration of factors contributing to his father and son’s bipolar disorder. His first book, Too Good to be True? Nutrients Quiet the Unquiet Brain, addressed, among other things, the role of nutrients in treating mental disorders. In Beyond Mental Illness, that odyssey has now morphed into an exploration of factors contributing to mental illness as well as other physical disorders. In this book, Moyer provides a perspective beyond the standard DSM-5 diagnoses and even the very concept of mental illness.

The stove-piped diagnoses dominating current medical practices are obsolete. While the medical establishment resists the need for major reformation, the public is beginning to demand science-based diagnoses and treatments. Here Moyer outlines deficiencies in current diagnostic systems that consign many to a lifetime of chronic illness. Their illnesses are not being properly diagnosed and treated.

Since the publication of Beyond Mental Illness in 2014, a plethora of academic research in some of the best journals has validated some of his hypotheses. The key for more effective treatments is not to be found in drugs that mitigate downstream biological processes. The key is to identify and treat the diagnosable and treatable upstream biological processes.