23 Quotes by Thomas R. Insel

With the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, more people will have insurance coverage and, in principle, be eligible for more care.

Nearly every business collects metrics on inventory, sales, and workplace process. Health care has been slow to measure these kinds of outcomes. Increasingly, general medicine, via either managed care or large practice settings, is improving by collecting data through electronic records and refining practice based on what works.

We have to remain humble about our understanding of the brain, because even our most powerful tools remain pretty blunt instruments for decoding the brain. In fact, we still do not know how to decipher the basic language of how the brain works.

A National Database on Autism Research is fostering sharing of data and collaborations. Scientists are also making great strides at the interface of biology and engineering with new technologies that are laying the groundwork for future advances.

What causes autism? As far as we know in 2013, there is no single gene or single environmental factor that accounts for the more than 1 million Americans with ASDs.

What do we know about autism in 2013? Autism symptoms generally emerge before age three and usually much earlier, often as language delays or lack of social engagement. Recent research suggests that autism can be detected during the first year of life, even before classic symptoms emerge. Indeed, the symptoms may be a late stage of autism.

Unlike the heart or kidney, which have a small, defined set of cell types, we still do not have a taxonomy of neurons, and neuroscientists still argue whether specific types of neurons are unique to humans. But there is no disputing that neurons are only about 10 percent of the cells in the human brain.

We need to ask whether, in the long term, some individuals with a history of psychosis may do better off medication.

Sometimes, patients with serious mental illness, just as with other serious medical illnesses, require hospitalization. In the absence of available public or private hospital beds, there are few options.