Posted by Squiggles on October 11, 2006, at 8:02:16
In reply to Re: experts say...ditch schizophrenia label, posted by alexandra_k on October 10, 2006, at 22:30:58
....
> Ditto with the majority of psychiatric categories...
>
> No underlying essences in common...
> Our categories are more like 'Greenstone' than 'H2O'.
> So...
> Better categories are needed.
>
> I'm a fan of the symptom approach.
>
> Trouble is that the same issue arises on the level of symptoms...
>
> It seems likely that delusions that arise in response to cerebral injury are importantly different from delusions that arise in a context of psychosis, for example. Well... That is okay. Methinks the DSM should be working to classify symptoms on the basis of cause (aetiology) anyways. Clades have worked out pretty well for Biology (for example)...
I agree with you (if i understand this
correctly) that it is a matter of practical
convention that doctors categorize mental
illnesses. The names end up being the
thing-- but whether there is a real physical
disorder in the brain that always corresponds
to that name, is another matter. I think
this is the reason for all the MRI shots trying
to say -- here is schizophrenia, here is bipolar
disorder, etc. But that may be just one of the angles of the picture if you like. What if the psychotic process is not a particular disorder of a neuron (like myeletic degeneration, or lesions, or tumour) but rather a chemical process, and
an erratic one at that... i don't think the MRI would pick that up. Working down from the category than up from the symptoms may lead to more mistakes. Hypotheses are like that.Squiggles
poster:Squiggles
thread:693568
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20061011/msgs/693779.html