Hi! This is my essay for the Case Western Alexander A. Treuhaft Memorial Scholarship Essay. It is due tomorrow so I would really appreciate some feedback on it. Thank you so much!
Essay Topic (250 - 500 words): "No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that created it. We need to see the world anew." - Albert Einstein
Identify a problem in the world of science or engineering that can be solved by looking at the world anew. Describe your solution.
After interning at a spine clinic last summer and shadowing a spine surgeon, I took away one recurring theme that applied to all problems, medical or otherwise, that the only way to cure or fix a problem is to treat and fix the source of the problem. When the surgeon diagnosed the patients' spine condition, such as a herniated disc or spinal stenosis, he would then discuss with the patient the various treatment options. The four options he presented to his patients were: do nothing, pain management injections, physical therapy, or surgery. Many patients were daunted by the thought of surgery, but the surgeon always made the point that without treating the source of the pain by fixing the structural problem in the patients' spine through surgery, the pain, the problem, will never go away, and will often get worse with time, and thus often convinced patients to have the surgery. The more I thought about this concept, that the way to fix a problem was to fix the source, the more I realized how much it related to all areas of science and other areas of life as well.
For so many years, especially in the treatment of psychological disorders and mental illnesses such as depression and bipolar disorder, psychologists were just treating the symptoms to no real gain. Because treating the symptoms of these conditions does not provide permanent relief, this problem of psychological disorders and mental illnesses needs to be considered from a new perspective, and can be solved by looking at the problem anew. Instead of just treating the symptoms, as doctors have been doing since the acknowledgement of these conditions, the conditions need to be stifled and cured by finding the source and fixing whatever is causing it neurologically. In recent years, this has been the trend in psychology. Psychology and neuroscience are increasingly overlapping as researchers look to the physiology within the brain to find the causes of certain psychological disorders. All problems stem from a source. Finding this source and fixing it will effectively cure these mental illnesses that one and four American adults suffer from. At this point, psychology is still transitioning into its partnership with neuroscience, but in order for the cures for these mental illnesses to be discovered and developed, psychology needs to stop treating the symptoms and needs to complete the merger and dependence on neuroscience to find the sources of these issues to lead to a cure to mental illnesses that plague over 57 million people in America each year. Just like back pain has a physiological source such as a herniated disc, so also do mental illnesses have physiological sources and these illnesses can only be cured by fixing the source through neuroscience, a perspective that differs from the past conventional methods of simply treating the symptoms.
Essay Topic (250 - 500 words): "No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that created it. We need to see the world anew." - Albert Einstein
Identify a problem in the world of science or engineering that can be solved by looking at the world anew. Describe your solution.
new consciousness
After interning at a spine clinic last summer and shadowing a spine surgeon, I took away one recurring theme that applied to all problems, medical or otherwise, that the only way to cure or fix a problem is to treat and fix the source of the problem. When the surgeon diagnosed the patients' spine condition, such as a herniated disc or spinal stenosis, he would then discuss with the patient the various treatment options. The four options he presented to his patients were: do nothing, pain management injections, physical therapy, or surgery. Many patients were daunted by the thought of surgery, but the surgeon always made the point that without treating the source of the pain by fixing the structural problem in the patients' spine through surgery, the pain, the problem, will never go away, and will often get worse with time, and thus often convinced patients to have the surgery. The more I thought about this concept, that the way to fix a problem was to fix the source, the more I realized how much it related to all areas of science and other areas of life as well.
For so many years, especially in the treatment of psychological disorders and mental illnesses such as depression and bipolar disorder, psychologists were just treating the symptoms to no real gain. Because treating the symptoms of these conditions does not provide permanent relief, this problem of psychological disorders and mental illnesses needs to be considered from a new perspective, and can be solved by looking at the problem anew. Instead of just treating the symptoms, as doctors have been doing since the acknowledgement of these conditions, the conditions need to be stifled and cured by finding the source and fixing whatever is causing it neurologically. In recent years, this has been the trend in psychology. Psychology and neuroscience are increasingly overlapping as researchers look to the physiology within the brain to find the causes of certain psychological disorders. All problems stem from a source. Finding this source and fixing it will effectively cure these mental illnesses that one and four American adults suffer from. At this point, psychology is still transitioning into its partnership with neuroscience, but in order for the cures for these mental illnesses to be discovered and developed, psychology needs to stop treating the symptoms and needs to complete the merger and dependence on neuroscience to find the sources of these issues to lead to a cure to mental illnesses that plague over 57 million people in America each year. Just like back pain has a physiological source such as a herniated disc, so also do mental illnesses have physiological sources and these illnesses can only be cured by fixing the source through neuroscience, a perspective that differs from the past conventional methods of simply treating the symptoms.
