The Captured Mind: A Theoretical Framework for Digital-Age Mental Health

ABSTRACT Background: This paper is a contribution to scientific psychology, clinical psychiatry, and public mental health. The biopsychosocial model (Engel, 1977) was developed before the internet, before the algorithm, and before the possibility that the social environment could be optimised in real time to modify human behaviour without informed consent. It has been increasingly criticised as insufficient for the digital age, yet no systematic theoretical extension has emerged that addresses algorithmically mediated environments as a distinct pathogenic domain. Problem: There is a growing gap between the mental health phenomena clinicians observe and the theoretical frameworks available to name and treat them. AI-driven algorithmic platforms are associated with neurobiological changes, identity disruption, and loss of autonomous agency at a pace that may exceed human adaptive capacity. Theory: This paper proposes The Captured Mind — a theoretically grounded, falsifiable framework proposing that the mind is an embodied, extended, and environmentally embedded system, and that when the rate of technological change exceeds an individual or collective adaptive threshold, a specific pathological state may emerge — here termed digital capture. This framework is proposed as a testable extension of the biopsychosocial model, not as its replacement. Framework Structure: The Captured Mind is the foundational theory. ADAPT (Adaptive Digital-Age Psychological Taxonomy) is its seven-domain clinical application. ADAPT-SHIELD is the public health extension — a five-domain self-assessment tool for use before clinical contact. Evidence: Convergent evidence from neuroscience, cognitive psychology, cross-cultural psychiatry, and technostress research supports the core claims. Neuroimaging studies document addiction-relevant neural correlates associated with algorithmic engagement. Population-level cultural homogenisation via AI systems is presented as a testable hypothesis requiring longitudinal investigation. Contribution: This paper proposes a synthesising framework grounded in neuroscience, cognitive psychology, technostress research, and cognitive science, situated within the historical development of psychological theories of mind. Its distinctive contribution is the formulation of pace-of-change as a candidate independent pathogenic variable and the application of extended mind theory to understand when digital engagement becomes pathological. The framework is offered as a proposed extension to the biopsychosocial model, generating testable hypotheses for empirical investigation