The sorry state of modern academic psychiatry

I’m not sure who advised the king about the appointment of Ed Bullmore as Regius Professor of Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London (see announcement). I wrote a satirical, even rude, review of Bullmore’s book The inflamed mind a few years ago (see previous post). As I’ve always said, psychiatry has been too dominated by biomedical psychiatrists, like Bullmore. I haven’t always been totally complimentary either about Simon Wessely, the first incumbent of the Regius post (see eg. previous post). Nor do I think he’s made as much of reforming the Mental Health Act (see another previous post) as he had the opportunity to do (see yet another previous post). 

As I said in another previous post, modern academic psychiatry started in this country with the appointment in 1948 of Aubrey Lewis as Professor of Psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital medical school, which changed its name to the Institute of Psychiatry, now IoPPN. Lewis had a much more sceptical scientific approach to psychiatry than Bullmore. Psychiatry’s emphasis has changed to be more biomedical since the start of the psychopharmacology era in the 1950s (see eg. another previous post). The limits of biomedical research do need to be recognised (see eg. yet another previous post), but I’m afraid Ed Bullmore will not lead the necessary changes.