Biological psychiatry
Biological psychiatry, sometimes referred to as bio-psychiatry, is a term essentially synonymous with "conventional psychiatry" used by its critics, and less often by psychiatrists to be very specific about the biological aspects of psychiatry they are discussing.
Orthodox psychiatric thinking and its critics
The World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry represents over 4,500 mental health professionals and holds congresses around the world. The journal Biological Psychiatry, published by the Society of Biological Psychiatry and ranked third out of almost 90 psychiatry titles, covers the whole range of what the editors maintain is psychiatric neuroscience [1]. “Advances in Biological Psychiatry” is also a series of textbooks that reflect current psychiatric thinking.
Though used by orthodox psychiatrists in textbooks and journals, critics of mainstream mental health practice frequently use the term to categorise diagnostic and treatment practices in modern psychiatry. References to "biological psychiatry" imply a medical model of mental health; undue emphasis upon biological theories and psychiatric drug treatment.
Dr. Peter Breggin, a leading critic of biological psychiatry, has written several books in which he attempts to demonstrate the side effects of neuroleptics, popularly known as "antipsychotics," and the effects of administering Ritalin (methylphenidate) and other psychiatric drugs to adolescents, children and even toddlers [2]. Breggin is a psychiatrist but mainstream psychiatrists have criticized Breggin’s attack on Ritalin by questioning his academic credentials [3].
The market for psychotropic drugs is based on biological models of mental disorders, for instance the dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia and the serotonin-norepinephrine theory of depression. Much the same can be said about the markets for ADHD drugs for children, which have expanded rapidly in many nations [4] (pdf). Such biologically-based hypotheses for the etiology of mental disorders, or in the case of children undesirable conducts (also considered disorders in psychiatric thinking), are referred to collectively as the chemical imbalance theory by biological psychiatrists.
Rebuttals to Criticism
Criticism is countered by claims that neuroleptic drugs do work with people in psychotic crises. The biochemical effects of these drugs are well established. This, biological psychiatrists suggest, restore to balance some existing "chemical imbalances" in the brain. It is widely accepted in the psychiatric field that this offers some support to the theories put forth by bio-psychiatry. However, Colin Ross has disputed the sort of reasoning that “if it responds to medication, it must have a biological cause” [5]. Ross and other non biological psychiatrists have advanced a trauma model of psychoses, including some types of schizophrenia [6] (pdf), in contrast to the medical model in mainstream bio-psychiatry.
Biological psychiatrists, maintain that ultimately mental disorders are caused by biological factors, whether those factors are anatomical or physiological, inborn or acquired, environmental or individual. A mental disorder with unknown etiology is still rooted in biology despite the fact that the origin is not completely established (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence); whether the problem is a product of somatic or neural malfunctioning. Critics in the Anti-psychiatry movement respond that bio-psychiatrists’ “unknown etiology” stance may be interpreted as advancing an unfalsifiable, and therefore pseudoscientific, hypothesis.
See also
External links
- 'Letter of Resignation from the American Psychiatric Association', Loren R. Mosher, MD, to APA president, December 4, 1998. [7]
- NewMediaExplorer.org - 'FDA Covers Up Report - Mosholder: 'Antidepressants Double Suicides in Children', Sepp Hasslberger (August 12, 2004)