Saturday, August 19, 2023

Psychiatry needs to abandon its biomedical framework

Campolonghi & OrrĂ¹ (2023) argue that psychiatry needs to abandon its biomedical framework (see Mad in America research news). As they say, treating functional mental illness as brain disease "constitutes an illegitimate epistemological leap” which “leads to pseudoscientific (and unethical) practices”. 

As they go on, “biological processes and the brain are [of course] involved in enabling and mediating cognitive, emotional, and behavioral functions and responses”. However, "the consistent and systematic search for biological and neurological causes of distress and problematic behaviors conducted over more than a century" has not provided "any evidence or support for the existence of 'mental disorders' as natural kinds”.

The problem is that “psychiatry is not built upon physical sciences (as medicine is) and yet adheres to a (neo)positive-empiricist tradition”. Psychiatry will not find it easy to abandon its biomedical framework but it needs to do so in the interests of patients.

3 comments:

Dr.C.J.Blom (Psychiatrist) said...


This person is writing about amateur psychology, not psychiatry.

Edward said...

Mind boggling (no pun intended) why, at that this stage of the con and the extent to which the con has been exposed, would any person seek "treatment" from a "psychiatrist"

Anonymous said...

Why does it have to be either relational or biological? Why can't we accept that we understand some things, don't understand many others and ultimately use all the tools we have in our box to try and help people. Surely we should be arguing to expand the tool box with new tools, rather than ditch the old ones and replace the box with a completely different one that does not include any of the old ones?