Brainaction

A form of dualism, the bipolar opposites of consciously directable mental function versus the brain’s unconscious automatic operations, governs brain action (see Descartes). ‘I think, therefore I am” gives consciously directed thought deserved preeminence. The many different ways that brains bring to...

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....

The simplest view of mental disorder divides it in three: “mad, sad or bad”. The mad have psychoses that disable. Fortunately, only a few go mad. Many more suffer. Here belong the depressed, the anxious and the obsessive, in most...

A mountain of anomalies and a canyon of pitfalls have not dissuaded psychiatrists from taking the descriptive approach to diagnosis.  They simply ignore them. Others see promise of advance in more of the same approach. They propose dimensional measures of...

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...

In the opening editorial of its bicentennial volume, the British Journal of Psychiatry plainly sighted the elephant in the room in terms that left no doubt it had always been there. In discussing psychiatry’s failings the author blamed the descriptive...

Psychiatrists bemoan the deficiencies of their diagnostic labels while ignoring the cause, they use the wrong method, descriptive diagnosis (see Psychiatry). It identifies the symptoms that occur together as implying that they have a common cause. The reasoning survives because...

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...