Saturday, May 01, 2021

The future of psychiatry

I recently came across an obituary for Lyn Pilowski (who I have mentioned in parenthesis in a previous post). Unfortunately she died aged 46 in 2007 of a brain tumour.

What interested me is that Anthony Clare (who I have also mentioned before eg. see previous post) thought she "embodied the future of psychiatry in the years to come". I think this just shows that Clare, despite his emphasis on an eclectic approach to psychiatry, really was a biomedical psychiatrist (see previous post), even if at the softer end of that spectrum. 

The hope of brain scanning for elucidating the biological basis of schizophrenia, which Pilowsky could be said to have embodied, has failed (see eg. another previous post). Psychiatry needs to be helped to become more relational in its practice.

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