Many people share a deep and growing concern about psychiatry’s limitations. Meanwhile, Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) offers a framework grounded in science and is also deeply humane. Rather than defining mental health through labels and symptom checklists, IPNB recognizes health and well-being as emergent properties of integrated systems, especially the nervous system in relationship with the body, other people, and the environment.
Psychiatry reduces a person’s suffering to a fixed diagnosis, while IPNB reveals that distress is a signal that integration has been disrupted. This disruption can result from trauma, chronic stress, lack of safe connection, or unmet biological and relational needs, not a defective brain or chemical imbalance. IPNB does not see human suffering as pathology, but as an understandable response to overwhelming conditions.
Unlike psychiatry, which is dominated by medicalized models with no clear biological markers for most diagnoses, IPNB is based on observable, measurable processes that align with principles from neuroscience, developmental psychology, and systems theory. It draws from a broad base of interdisciplinary science, including the study of homeostasis, attachment, and regulation. This is not theoretical in the abstract sense; it’s rooted in how the brain and body function in real-time, especially in connection with others.
There is no shame in the IPNB model. There is no hierarchy of the “well” versus the “ill.” There is simply a recognition that integration supports health, and disintegration signals a system that needs support, often through connection, safety, and attunement, not just drugs or diagnoses. It’s not perfect or complete, but it’s a framework that moves toward justice and truth, not away from it.
Humans in distress deserve better. IPNB offers one scientifically grounded, non-pathologizing, shame-busting way forward.
