For almost 40 years, conventional wisdom has been that mental illness is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. "Serotonin" is a household word, along with Prozac, Zyprexa, and Zoloft.  But recently, there's been a vigorous debate within the medical community over whether that line of thinking is accurate. This summer Marcia Angell, a physician, senior lecturer at Harvard, and former editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, wrote in the New York Review of Books that the chemical-imbalance model of mental illness may be ineffective at best — and harmful, at worst.

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who allegedly killed 13 people and wounded 29 others during a shooting spree at Fort Hood in Texas last week, is an Army psychiatrist, trained in treating combat stress in soldiers. That has raised questions about how the job of counseling affects military health professionals. Olga Peña, managing editor of The Killeen Daily Herald, joins us with the latest from Fort Hood. Bret A. Moore is a clinical psychologist who served in Iraq for 27 months; he left the Army in 2008 for a number of reasons, among them the growing possibility of burnout. He says that mental health workers in the Army, like all soldiers, are not required to seek counseling, but they do have the choice to seek help if they wish. Nelson Ford is the CEO of LMI Consulting and a former undersecretary of the Army.  He says the Army is doing a fine job of improving its response to mental health problems.

In early 2003, Jayson Blair went from writing headlines for the New York Times to making headlines when it was discoverd that he had plagiarized dozens of stories. It was a scandal the Times itself called "a low point in the 152-year history of the paper." Blair "resigned under pressure" from the Times shortly thereafter and entered treatment for bipolar disorder. Even after a forced resignation, however, everyone needs to make a living. After such an inglorious and public fall, how would you pick yourself up and start over again?

Well, the hard lessons Jayson Blair learned can be taught to you: for a price, and potentially by Blair himself. He is now working as a life coach. We talk to Jayson Blair along with the man who hired him, Dr. Michael Oberschneider, founder and director at Ashburn Psychological Services.

Today people across the country are overwhelmed with the fear of loss: fear of losing one’s job, fear of losing one’s life savings, fear of losing all our money in a Bernie Madoff-style ponzi scheme. Can all of this anxiety be bad for our brains? Of course! Dr. Gregory Berns is the Director of the Center for Neuropolicy at Emory University and author of the book "Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently." He joins John and Adaora for a talk on how fear can impair our brain functions.

Psychiatry's number one diagnostic manual is being re-written -- and it's making everyone crazy. Gender identification disorder may be in, while sleepwalking disorder is on the outs. By 2012, the American Psychiatric Association hopes to have published a new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) -- the diagnostic manual used to determine if a patient has a mental disorder. Proposed changes are already being challenged by patients, insurance companies, and the pharmaceutical industry. The New York Times science journalist Benedict Carey explains.

For more information, read Benedict Carey's article in today's New York Times.

There are now over 800,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. Of those, roughly 300,000 have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but only half of these veterans have been professionally treated for their trauma. Traditional "exposure therapy" treatments help veterans get a handle on their experiences by having them relive them, using methods like talk therapy, guided visualizations, and others. Modern technology has recently begun making strides as effective treatment for 21st century combat. Software known as "Virtual Iraq" allows soldiers, through simulation, to become desensitized to deep-rooted traumatic experiences.

A new study of U.S. military veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan has found that 15 percent of women suffered some form of sexual trauma during their military service.

The market meltdown is not just a pocketbook issue — it’s become a psychological one. The economy’s downward spiral is taking our sense of well being with it. And as our anxiety and panic levels rise, we are creating a kind of feedback loop: The less confidence we have in our future, the less likely we are to go out and spend. That behavior, of course, only diminishes our chances of economic recovery.

Treating an adult for bipolar disorder can be difficult, but what happens when it's a three-year-old child?

You watch reality TV shows, but what if you thought your whole life was one? Psychiatrist Joel Gold say he's begun treating a set of new symptoms, "The Truman Show delusion," in which people think their entire existence is being televised in secret.

Guest: Maggie Jackson, journalist and author of "Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age"