Posted by Jane D on September 10, 2001, at 23:43:05
In reply to Its time to merge Psychiatry into Neurology, posted by NLFAmerica on September 10, 2001, at 19:27:01
> The National Liberation Front of the American mentally ill was created with one purpose. To free the oppressed mentally ill from the idea they have a "mental problem." If you have a so called mental illness what you really have is a physical brain function problem. It is the year 2001 and time for the world to recognize that severe mental illnesses are nothing but brain based physical illnesses. The term "mental illness" is a misnomer and is incorrect.
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---- "Mental illness" often IS a brain based physical illness. In itself it describes symptoms. It can imply whatever else we choose to make it imply. Theories about the cause of mental illness change over time, as they do in every other disease. And many of us do have a "mental problem". That problem is the way that the illness effects and sometimes impairs the way that we perceive the world. It is different from other types of illness in this respect and it is a real and very severe problem.
> Mental illness should be diagnosed and treated by brain science medical experts. Psychiatrists and psychologists do not fit into this category. Neurologists however do. The NLF of America proposes that Psychiatry be formally merged into Neurology. This would improve the climate that surrounds the treatment of the mentally ill.
Psychiatrists can no longer be grouped with psychologists. This is a done deal. And a merger is as likely to make the climate surrounding neurological problems worse as to improve the status of the mentally ill. There is something especially frightening about mental illness to most people (including those of us who suffer from it I think). If people want to stigmatize us they are going to do so no matter how many name changes you make.
> Specifically the NLF of America proposes the following:
> 1) Formally combining the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) with the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). This new government research agency would then be called the National Institute for Brain Research. Biological research for severe mental illness would be given the same priority that research into other neurological illnesses gets.
---- Sure. Why not? I doubt this will increase the total pool but if we get more of it - great. Of course all our funding could go to stroke research instead.
> 2) Formally merging all University teaching hospital Psychiatry departments with Neurology departments at the same school. Departments of psychiatry should not exist separately with departments of Neurology. They should be one and the same. Only this way will severe mental illness ever be recognized for what it really is. Brain function problems ie; neuropsychiatric diseases. Future psychiatrists would instead become Neurologists. Psychiatry as a separate branch of medicine would cease to exist.
---- Again - the change in ideas about causality has already occured. As you said above, it IS 2001. You want to merge departments at the same time that other specialties are subdividing more due to the increased amount of information that there is to master. Some cross training is fine but just how many years are your new psycho-neurologists expected to spend in training? And how much good will it really do me to get my antidepressants from an expert in strokes. Are you really that sure that antidepressants will have no place in this new science?> Formally combining psychiatry into Neurology in the long run would lead to dramatically improved, high tech based methods of diagnosing and treating severe forms of mental illness. Current approaches in psychiatry are oftentimes ineffective at accurately diagnosing and successfully treating severe forms of mental illness. Much of the reason for this is psychiatry's strong residual base in psychology and not in real medical neuroscience.
---- Perhaps in the future this will be true but at this point neuroscience doesn't offer much in the way of diagnosing these problems. Psychiatry, while not perfect, does.---- In summary I think that much of what you advocate has already happened. Some of it never will. Combining the two fields organizationally and for research purposes makes some sense but you seem to be suggesting that psychiatry has no knowlege to contribute to the mix. I just don't believe that this is (still) true.
Jane (who thinks psychoanalysts were the plague of the 20th century)
poster:Jane D
thread:78515
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20010907/msgs/78556.html