Understanding psychosis

This post has the same title as the latest post from the Healthy Minds. Health Lives blog, my favourite for commenting on because it is published under the auspices of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) (see previous post). The APA blogger suggests that it helps to understand psychosis by recognising its connection with the brain. Does it really? It's merely tautologous. Of course it's something to do with the brain. So what? Knowledge of the brain doesn't give any understanding about personal and social factors.

Actually understanding the irrational may require more than being logical. What makes us think that someone is mentally ill may be that what they are saying is difficult to follow and understand. It makes us think there is something wrong mentally. It doesn't help to wishfully speculate about brain processes when what is required is considerable effort to understand why someone may have crazy experiences and express themselves in a mad way. We don't live in the real world for all sorts of reasons, including our own convenience about understanding the world. And it suits the APA blogger to have her biomedical belief about psychosis.