The editor of the
British Journal of Psychiatry, in his latest "
From the editor's desk", has said he would not have contemplated becoming a psyc
hiatrist if psychiatry had been a branch of neurology, which is relevant to a previous post. He has recently been at a conference in Belgrade "where speaker after speaker predicted the demise of our profession or its absorption into neurology or some other discipline, as the funding for mental illness and respect for psychiatrists gets progressively less". This is again relevant to another previous post.
Like me he's disturbed by these trends. Let's hope he's right to be optimistic nonetheless.
3 comments:
I imagine the neurologists are equally horrified. It would be like astrologers being permitted in the astronomer's guild.
If psychiatry were absorbed into neurology, it might be an advantage to the rest of the world: Perhaps neurologists would be more intolerant of the cr*p science that passes in psychiatry and those papers would get the ridicule from doctors they so richly deserve.
Prof Thomas Szasz said, "If schizophrenia, for example, turns out to have a biochemical cause and cure, schizophrenia would no longer be one of the diseases for which a person would be involuntarily committed. In fact, it would then be treated by neurologists, and psychiatrists would then have no more to do with it than they do with Glioblastoma [malignant tumour], Parkinsonism, and other diseases of the brain."
Szasz as a neoliberal who also doesn't support the welfare state
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