Could Brain Scans Bring Psychiatry Into the 21st Century?

Welcome to State of Mind, a new section from Slate and Arizona State University dedicated to exploring mental health. When parents learn about Michael Milham's research, they often ask him, "Can you give my child a brain scan to figure out what's wrong with them?" Milham treats his young patients like any other child psychiatrist would: He observes and interviews them, assigns them diagnoses, and prescribes courses of treatment. But unlike many psychiatrists, Milham is also a scientist--he is vice president of research at the Child Mind Institute--and an expert on functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, a tool that allows researchers to measure levels of activity across the brain. He understands why parents want him to scan their children's brains. For families in search of an explanation for their child's distress, the inexactitude of psychiatry--its overlapping diagnoses, its uncertain prognoses--can be frustrating.