Following thoughts were spurred by recent political discussions I’ve had with friends, family, and people from other countries, where many stated … “America has lost its mind!”. I started to look at our American Experiment through a new lens. Was it an attempt to create a governing system paralleling a well-functioning human brain with safe guards to protect against dysfunction? The U.S. Constitution might be viewed as clinical insight into the human condition, the human psyche. Did our Framers’ understand neurology/psychology? Hold that thought.

Per 2022 NIH report documenting mental illnesses in the United States, “(I)t is estimated that more than one in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness, with varying in degrees of severity, ranging from mild to moderate to severe.”

In the late 1700’s the world was still in the medical dark ages relative to today’s knowledge of the brain’s neuro functioning and causes of mental dysfunction. The term neurology, “(i)ncluding the diagnosis and treatment of nervous system disorders, highlighting the comprehensive knowledge neurologists have about the brain’s structure and function”.

I’m not a neurology expert, but we now know two parts of the brain must work together or we make bad decisions. One is the Anterior Insular Cortex (AIC) and other the Prefrontal Cortex (PFC). Emotional responses and memory are triggered through the AIC while problem solving and reasoning is performed through the PFC.

Per the Mayo Clinic, when we feel fear or hatred, emotional quick responses triggered though the AIC can bypass our PFC, i.e., our hardwired break the glass survival mode response. Thus losing prefrontal cortex cognitive functions related to social aspects of behavior, which play a key role in planning, problem-solving, self-knowledge, motivation, and emotional and social reasoning, and growth.

Back to our Framers… they brilliantly, yet unknowingly, created a government by the people with a political mental healthcare plan built-in. Where our legislative and judicial branches are weighted a little heavier toward the PFC model for planning and problem-solving, while the executive branch weighted a little heavier on AIC model to quickly react to imminent foreign dangers and natural disasters, but all branches require having independent well-functioning AIC/PFC and required to have problem-solving cognitive-behavioral therapy sessions with each other to work out issues.

America’s current political dysfunction is stoked by an emotional fear of “them” for a variety of motives, thus bypassing the critical legislative/judicial reasoning checks on behavior. The U.S. Constitution is our Framers’ “12-step” governing treatment plan to adhere too. This plan also gives Citizens the right to use their AIC/PFC faculties to intervene peacefully, reminding government officials they work for the people.

Once our nation’s political mental crisis is over, the world will say… “Welcome back!”