Brainaction

In this blog the Resource entitled Simulation of Illness addresses the most common hazard to diagnosis, the faking of complaint. In hysteria and malingering the simulation of complaints give the false impression of illness. A succesful fake brings gain. The malingerer fakes...

Long after Ivan Illich (1977) denounced professional expansionism it continues unchecked. Governments struggle to contain the prohibitive cost of health services, but do nothing about its most blatant waste, the recurrent epidemics of pseudo-illness. Illich invented the term iatrogenesis, doctor-generated complaint....

To become effective, psychiatry has to give away descriptive diagnosis (see Elephantanopia series). It has to find causes. Far easier said than done. The causes of mental disorder are more elusive than those of physical illness. The March 2012 issue...

As we blog on, the British Journal of Psychiatry redeems itself. Its second issue for 2012 provides in editorial and original research papers a peek into a future that puts aside descriptive diagnosis for solutions that connect mental states to...

No other branch of medicine generates so many critics from within its ranks. The devotion of psychiatrists to their craft impels them. They wrestle daily with its failings  or wince as they cope with those of their colleagues. They address our...

Humans succeed so well at using causes to achieve desired effects that David Hume’s assertion in 1739 still seems preposterous. He held that we cannot know the connection between cause and effect. We overlook the way we gain what knowledge...