Philosophy of Psychiatry

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1.What is the biological approach to psychiatry? What is the form of neurobiological models?

Biological approach

The basic assumption of biological psychiatry is that mental illness is due to a biochemical imbalance, which can be corrected by medication. The view that the phenomena of human existence can be understood in exclusively biological terms is obviously attractive. If psychopathology equals bodily dysfunction, aberrant behavior and experience can be fixed in a natural substrate. Accountability for personal misfortune is shifted away from personal agency and the impact of relationships. The complexities of meaning are apparently made simple. Reducing relations between people to objective connections seems to make them more manageable. http://www.uea.ac.uk/~wp276/Can.htm

Biological psychiatry in its more expurgated version avoids radical reductionism by granting that environmental stressors are necessary precipitants of mental health problems on the basis of an antecedent "diathesis". Biological predisposition, however, is an overriding factor in this etiological eclecticism. As mentioned above, the basic assumption of biological psychiatry is that mental illness is due to a biochemical imbalance, which can be corrected by medication. The implication is that personal conflict and responsibility are avoided. Additional appeal of the biological approach comes from the apparent authority it provides for many practicing psychiatrists in the clinical team. The understanding of basic bodily processes is knowledge that gives power to psychiatrists which is denied other clinicians. Trainees should be able to question the primary assumption that the kinds of biochemical processes that produce mental illness ...