I think the reason it’s so hard to discern the difference between biologically and environmentally caused diseases is partly because of the way we think about causality. What does it mean to acknowledge that “stress” can cause or contribute to heart disease? When a gang member has a bullet removed from his brain, what was the “cause” of his death? The bullet? Bad parenting? Social policy?
There are people for whom the physiological and neuromuscular stress responses have become so repeatedly triggered and habituated that their lives are on the line. How best to treat these diseases of stress? The question is no different for heart disease than for depression. We take meds and have surgeries only to return back to the same stressful job. The paravertebral muscles in the back can be so chronically tensed that discs bulge. One person is shown the x-ray and encouraged to have surgery to correct the problem. This helps a lot with the pain. But there’s no insight, no improved awareness, so right back to the same stressful situation and more back surgery five years later. Another person is taught how to regain control of the paravertebral muscles. As a result of this learning process, the person can now relax these muscles; the spine is no longer bent; the disk no longer bulges; no more pain. Improved self-awareness, improved functioning, improved insight. Person gets a new job.
How we understand the cause of a problem will determine what we decide to do about it. If your eye doctor tells you your nearsightedness is caused by a refractive, structural problem in your eye, you will probably get eye-glasses. If you listen to Aldous Huxley or Dr. William Bates, you might be persuaded that your myopia is primarily a matter of poor seeing habits, and that you might regain perfect vision by replacing these habits with better ones. The bottom line is this: Glasses are fine. They help you see better immediately, and with no effort on your part. The Bates Method is a lot like meditation. It takes time, effort, and commitment. Glasses are an UR intervention that masks symptoms, and people’s vision continues to get worse and worse (anyone’s prescriptions going the other way?) Back surgery will help your back feel better; but it doesn’t address the problem integrally (no engagement of awareness). It’s the same for psychiatric problems, in my opinion. Awareness heals. But we don’t want to hear it! It may be true that the status quo, by its very nature, suppresses the integral truth of health and disease. But WE ARE THE STATUS QUO! We would rather wear glasses, have back surgery, take the heart meds and the psych meds. We want to be enlightened, but not if it might mean quitting that job of ours. Without the job we’d have no way to afford the glasses, Prozac, and back surgeries! Insanity!