Understanding 'Mental Health': What is the Dialogue Between Psychiatry and Philosophy?

Jack Cummins

I see this as a major area of debate. This is because mental health involves subjective experiences and objective aspects of behaviour. The traditions of psychology and psychiatry developed in conjunction with one another. Both draw upon ideas of cognitive science, especially as psychiatry involves psychochemistry as a means of stabilising the 'mind'.

In the past, there was the opposition of antipsychiatry, in which thinking of RD Laing and Thomas Szaz saw psychiatry as a limiting way of trying to 'normalize' human experience. Those who were deviant were often labelled as 'mentally ill'. However, the arguments against this perspective involved ideas about the 'reality' of 'mental health' for those experiencing mental health problems, as well as those affected by risks entailed.

Psychiatry draws upon ideas about what constitutes 'normal' behaviour and experiences. It also involves looking at the nature of causation and how the biological; psychological and social aspects of experience impact on life. Psychiatry may be seen as maintaining the 'status quo' or as progressive..it may also be seen as hinging on an understanding of the nature of "mind'.

In starting this thread I am interested in looking at the scope and limitations of psychiatry. To what extent is psychiatry able to look at subjective experiences of suffering and how does philosophy come into the picture of such understanding? Are the perspectives of psychiatry and philosophy compatible or divergent?

DifferentiatingEgg

↪Jack Cummins

that's an interesting question... we could detail psychology as a middle ground between the two disciplines, but it's obvious that psychology isn't the dialogue between philosophy and psychiatry...and perhaps it's even more of an intersection between all three disciplines. I would say, at the least, that the dialogue between psychiatry and philosophy is concerned with: what is the self, what is mental illness, and what is healing? Psychology is the middle man, that operational zone between the two disciplines where philosophical problems are translated into methods, therapies, and experiments, as a medium of translation between psychiatry's "medicinal cause" and philosophical "meaning."

Paine

↪Jack Cummins

As a reflection of professional care, the difference between psychology and psychiatry concerns diagnosis and treatment. Psychiatry has developed as a medical approach and psychology has developed from views of individual behavior that come from many, often conflicting, models. The role of the "subjective" comes from different models of human development. The value and role of subjective reporting is also hotly contested. Both practices are keen upon useful approaches to real-time problems. In many clinics, both kinds are on teams evaluating people. The distinction between objective and subjective is too general in this case.

On the clinical psychology side, the development of the Boulder model has been prominent in the development of the practice. The goal was to introduce rigorous methods of research that could answer to the standards of "medical" research but remain as a separate discipline. I linked to it as a search page result to show that it is far from being a settled debate.

P.S. Both sides that I have encountered turn purple at the mention of Liang and Szaz.

Understanding 'Mental Health': What is the Dialogue Between Psychiatry and Philosophy?

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