The model that I’ve put forth posits that fight and flight behaviors, such as fear, paranoia, and suicidal emotions, are an active response to being coerced by people that the patient identifies with. The idea is that at the end of the day, it’s a conflict of loyalty.

“Humans have not always lived under conditions where their peers were more loyal to a nation-state then to them. The word legal derives from loyal, and the human brain is designed to select peers that are loyal to the self, not to the super-organism of the state. “

This governance 2.0 model of mental illness holds that if you remove the social coercion, then you also alleviate the symptoms. It puts forth the idea that the most successful treatment might be to give the patient, and his or her peers, the freedom of choice in every aspect of their life. Sovereignty.

It’s not that controversial an idea, but part of a dialogue that stretches back hundreds of years, and part of the legacy of psychology, as you would know, being a practicing clinical psychologist.

The silver lining of the idea is that it might be possible to radically decrease the amount of mental health problems that people face, just by giving them their sovereignty, and that technology like the block-chain and other P2P technologies could play an important role in that.