Schizophrenia as a symptom of psychiatry’s reluctance to enter the moral era of medicine

[JamesBond007]

Leading researchers complain that psychiatry refuses “to enter the moral era of medicine” and clings to an outdated view of schizophrenia.



"A profession whose core values are based on a non-factual belief system runs the risk of becoming cult-like, as it has to find ways to exercise epistemic control of its members, proselytize aggressively against the tide of non-confirmatory scientific evidence and manipulate its messaging to the outside world,” the leading researchers write. “Indeed, institutional power to define ‘specialist’ categories of disease, such as DSM-criteria for schizophrenia, may be considered an instrument to exercise epistemic control par excellence.”

“The psychiatric gaze, therefore, has the hallmarks of a belief system which is used to make promises to the world outside psychiatry. It is not evidence-based, nevertheless implicitly accepted as valid, nurturing the core values underlying the psychiatric way of perceiving the world of mental variation and addressing the clinical problems of patients.”


“We propose that psychiatry adopts a more complex and scientific psychiatric gaze that is considerably more agnostic and embraces the epistemological complexities of dealing with mental variation at the brain-mind-context interface.”



“A more agnostic and scientific psychiatric gaze would allow for recognition of the fact that DSM-5 is not based in science, and that psychiatrists have been allowed to unilaterally impose their value system on the ill-understood phenomenon of human mental variation. In the new moral era of medicine, it is unthinkable that a domain like mental health, which scientifically, in essence, remains enigmatic and extremely complex and is of tremendous importance to countless users and their families, would be dominated by a distorted belief system and the values of a single profession.”



https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34991949/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...016?via%3Dihub

[Harley]

As per the second article addressing this issue, I’ve always considered brain-mind context to be the most important to address( I am not a proponent of meds as a first resort). A pill does not and cannot solve everything( “finding the right medication for the right brain disease”). It is a bit like always relying on a crutch or walker for support when your leg muscles are capable of recovering— you will not recover in a timely manner if you are always taking away those growing pains necessary to level up your body.

I think adopting a more agnostic psychiatric gaze is great news. It would allow people to be treated as individuals based on what they’re experiencing, instead of being put through filters based on an individual psychiatrist’s blunt end of a hammer and forcing these people to fit in with the psychiatrist’s ideas of the mental illness or disorder.

[JamesBond007]

As per the second article addressing this issue, I’ve always considered brain-mind context to be the most important to address( I am not a proponent of meds as a first resort). A pill does not and cannot solve everything( “finding the right medication for the right brain disease”). It is a bit like always relying on a crutch or walker for support when your leg muscles are capable of recovering— you will not recover in a timely manner if you are always taking away those growing pains necessary to level up your body.

I think adopting a more agnostic psychiatric gaze is great news. It would allow people to be treated as individuals based on what they’re experiencing, instead of being put through filters based on an individual psychiatrist’s blunt end of a hammer and forcing these people to fit in with the psychiatrist’s ideas of the mental illness or disorder.

Thanks for the reply Harley. I just gave you thumbs up sorry it took so long.