Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-42gr6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T20:29:18.526Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The future of psychiatry in science and society 1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

Colin Blakemore
Colin Blakemore*
Affiliation:
University Laboratory of Physiology, Oxford
*
2Address for correspondence: Professor Colin Blakemore, University Laboratory of Physiology, Oxford OX1 3PT.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Synopsis

Psychiatry is, in a number of ways, a unique area within medicine. It is a subject of intense public interest, with a wide-ranging influence on non-medical culture; its practitioners have a perplexing variety of strategies of diagnosis and treatment, the diversity of which can be attributed to the lack of understanding of the physical basis of mental disease. It is argued here (using schizophrenia as a particular example) that the special nature of the signs and symptoms of psychiatric disorders, involving mainly behavioural disturbances, and alterations of thought and mood, have led to particular social, even political, attitudes towards the mentally ill, to the segregation of psychiatry as a medical discipline and to a view of the disease process different from that operating in other areas of medicine. The future progress of psychiatry, both in science and in society, might depend on changes of attitude among psychiatrists themselves.

Type
Research Article
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , February 1981 , pp. 27 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

This paper was first presented as the Sixth Aubrey Lewis Lecture, given at the Institute of Psychiatry on 15 November 1979

References

REFERENCES

Becker, H. S. (1973). Outsiders. Free Press: New York.Google Scholar
Bleuler, E. (1911). Dementia Praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias (trans. Zinkin, J.). International Universities Press: New York. 1950.Google Scholar
Creese, I., Burt, D. R. & Snyder, S. H. (1976). Dopamine receptor binding predicts clinical and pharmacological potencies of antischizophrenic drugs. Science 192, 481–483.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crow, T. J. (1979). Schizophrenia: the nature of the psychological disturbance and its possible neurochemical basis. In Brain and Mind (ed. Wolstenhome, G. and O'Connor, M.), pp. 335–343. Ciba Foundation Symposium 69 (new series). Excerpta Medica: Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Dunham, W. (1965). Community and Schizophrenia, An Epidemiological Analysis. Wayne State University Press: Detroit.Google Scholar
Greenblatt, M., Grosser, G. H. & Wechsler, H. (1964). Differential response of hospitalized depressed patients to somatic therapy. American Journal of Psychiatry 120, 935–943.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kendell, R. E. (1978). Schizophrenia – the disease concept refined. Trends in Neurosciences 1(1), 24–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kraepelin, E. (1896). Psychiatrie, ein Lehrbuch für Studierende und Ärtze (5th edn). Barth: Leipzig.Google Scholar
Kraepelin, E. (1919). Dementia Praecox and Paraphrenia (trans. Barclay, R. M. and Robertson, G. M.).Krieger: New York. Facsimile edition, 1971.Google Scholar
Lader, M. (1977). Psychiatry on Trial. Penguin Books: Harmondsworth.Google Scholar
Laing, R. D. (1967). The Politics of Experience. Penguin Books: Harmondsworth.Google Scholar
Lewis, A. (1978). The Later Papers of Sir Aubrey Lewis. Oxford University Press: Oxford.Google Scholar
May, P. R. A. (1968). Treatment of Schizophrenia: a Comparative Study of Five Treatment Methods. Science House: New York.Google Scholar
Murphy, J. M. (1976). Psychiatric labeling in cross-cultural perspective. Science 191, 1019–1028.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Owen, F., Cross, A. J., Crow, T. J., Longden, A., Poulter, M. & Riley, G. L. (1978). Increased dopamine receptor sensitivity in schizophrenia. Lancet ii, 223–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pöldinger, W. (1975). Compendium of Psychopharmacotherapy. Editiones‘Roche’: Basel.Google Scholar
Rosenhan, D. (1973). On being sane in insane places. Science 179, 250–258.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schneider, K. (1959). Klinische Psychopathologie (5th edn) (trans. Hamilton, M. W.). Grune and Stratton: New York.Google Scholar
Siegler, M., Osmond, H. & Mann, H. (1972). Laing's models of madness. In Laing and Anti-Psychiatry (ed. Boyers, R. and Orrill, R.), pp. 99–122. Penguin Books: Harmondsworth.Google Scholar
Snyder, S. H., Banerjee, S. P., Yamamura, H. I. & Greenberg, D. (1974). Drugs, neurotransmitters, and schizophrenia. Science 184, 1243–1253.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Strauss, J. S. & Carpenter, W. T. (1974). Characteristic symptoms and Outcome in schizophrenia. Archives of General Psychiatry 30, 429–434.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Szasz, T. (1978). Schizophrenia – a category error. Trends in Neurosciences 1(1), 26–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wing, J. K., Cooper, J. E. & Sartorius, N. (1974). The Measurement and Classification of Psychiatric Symptoms. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.Google Scholar