Volume 192 - Issue 11
Defining disorders of the mind
Author: Niall McLaren
Med J Aust 2010; 192 (11): 671. || doi: 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2010.tb03680.x
Published online: 7 June 2010
Published online: 7 June 2010
To the Editor: In your recent column, you drew attention to the “limitations of psychiatry’s scientific foundations for disorders of the mind”.1 This was despite psychiatry’s recent high profile, and the very large sums of money being thrown at the problem.
The limiting factor for a scientific psychiatry is that there isn’t one. Extensive research has shown that orthodox psychiatry does not yet have a formal, articulated model of mental disorder to guide its practice, its teaching and its research.2,3 Moreover, not one of the models used today, including the biological approach, can be developed to the point where it would meet the minimum criteria for a scientific model. Confections such as the “biopsychosocial model” do nothing but conceal the problem under yet another layer of jargon.
Releasing another Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM) will achieve nothing because it does not address mental disorder within the framework of an agreed model. In the absence of science, there is scope for non-scientific pressures (such as politics and finance) to have an inordinate influence on the many DSM committees.
Needless to say, this conclusion is most unpopular among many in the psychiatric establishment but, sooner or later, they will have to come to grips with the problem; otherwise, psychiatry as a profession will cease to exist.4
References
- Van Der Weyden MB. Defining disorders of the mind [From the Editor’s Desk]. Med J Aust 2010; 192: 361.
- McLaren N. Humanizing madness: psychiatry and the cognitive neurosciences. Ann Arbor: Future Psychiatry Press, 2007. 0_i1091855
- McLaren N. Humanizing psychiatry: the biocognitive model. Ann Arbor: Future Psychiatry Press, 2009. 0_i1091857
- McLaren N. Psychiatry’s failure to define itself [letter]. Australasian Psychiatry 2010. In press. 0_i1091859