If I hug a person and the person feels better I can explain that with a raise in oxytocin or with changed unconscious thoughts about how the person feels liked. Making that distinction isn't useful for guiding actions.
Any psychopharmaceutical is going to affect thinking patterns.
Furthermore there are issues in depression that are neither mind nor brain.
Above I spoke about releasing a trigger against my neighbors drilling machine. That involved noticing that part of my head get tense in response to the sound and releasing the tension. There's no mind-body dualism in that approach.
No-one's saying anything about mind-body dualism - except you.
Maybe a building is toppling over because of faulty design. Or maybe because the materials are substandard. These are separable issues, even though it is quite true that the design of the building is completely explicable in terms of materials.
Yes, psychoparmaceuticals affect thinking patterns, and yes, thinking patterns are fundamentally explicable in terms of biochemical states. But it is nevertheless the case that no amount of talking is going to fix someone's pre-synaptic uptake processes.
For a site extremely focused on fixing bad thinking patterns, I've noticed a bizarre lack of discussion here. Considering the high correlation between intelligence and mental illness, you'd think it would be a bigger topic.
I personally suffer from Generalized Anxiety Disorder and a very tame panic disorder. Most of this is focused on financial and academic things, but I will also get panicky about social interaction, responsibilities, and things that happened in the past that seriously shouldn't bother me. I have an almost amusing response to anxiety that is basically my brain panicking and telling me to go hide under my desk.
I know lukeprog and Alicorn managed to fight off a good deal of their issues in this area and wrote up how, but I don't think enough has been done. They mostly dealt with depression. What about rational schizophrenics and phobics and bipolar people? It's difficult to find anxiety advice that goes beyond "do yoga while watching the sunrise!" Pop psych isn't very helpful. I think LessWrong could be. What's mental illness but a wrongness in the head?
Mental illness seems to be worse to intelligent people than your typical biases, honestly. Hiding under my desk is even less useful than, say, appealing to authority during an argument. At least the latter has the potential to be useful. I know it's limiting me, and starting cycles of avoidance, and so much more. And my mental illness isn't even that bad! Trying to be rational and successful when schizophrenic sounds like a Sisyphusian nightmare.
I'm not fighting my difficulties nearly well enough to feel qualified to author my own posts. Hearing from people who are managing is more likely to help. If nothing else, maybe a Rational Support Group would be a lot of fun.