Personality Insights

Psychiatry’s Mind-Brain Problem Photo Recently, a psychiatric study on first episodes of made front-page news. People seemed quite surprised by the finding: that treatment programs that emphasized low doses of psychotropic drugs, along with individual psychotherapy, family education and a focus on social adaptation, resulted in decreased symptoms and increased wellness. But the real surprise — and disappointment — was that this was considered so surprising. The study, by Dr. Unfortunately, such clinical pragmatism has seriously declined in the United States, as psychiatry has veered toward pharmacology. Continue reading the main story Inherent to this proposition is the implication that psychological and social events somehow are not also brain events. With luck, studies like Dr. At the same time, it would be naïve to think that these problems will disappear, for they have dogged psychiatry throughout its history. However, having one foot on each side of the mind-brain divide was never a stable arrangement.