How does the ‘environment’ come to the person? The ‘ecology of the person’ and addiction

Abstract

Currently, psychiatry lacks a field that can be called “theoretical psychiatry”, which uses theoretical concepts and explanatory models: The main stream of research is to collect data of all kinds in the hope that the computational Big Data approach will shed a bright light on the black box of mental disorders. Accordingly, the biology-based Research Domain Criteria of the National Institute of Mental Health have been established. However, as philosophical analyses of concepts and methods have shown, several epistemological gaps stand in the way of a consistent multilevel understanding of mental disorders. Also, the implicit ontological problems in the biological reduction of the psychosocial level and in the integration of so-called hard and soft disciplines are mostly left out. As a consequence, a non-reductive psychological theory of mental disorders is sought that also integrates correlating biological and sociological issues. In this context, one example of promising nonreductive psychiatric research is the option of systems/network psychopathology. The possibilities for integrating different psychological perspectives are highlighted for the field of addiction research and treatment, where pragmatic behaviorist approaches dominate over the theory-based practice of psychoanalysis. In comparing the theoretical constructs of these two approaches, the relevance of the concept of “(social) environment” as the wealth of influential sociocultural factors is discussed at levels superior to the interpersonal micro-level, namely the organizational meso- and societal macro level, which is not sufficiently considered in current biopsychiatry. On this basis of argumentation, the usefulness of grounding and framing psychiatry through the field of ecological sciences, especially human ecology, is demonstrated. Finally, to this end, an outline of an ecological model of mental health and illness is presented.

A cultural-ecosocial systems view for psychiatry

“…Similarly, the cells of a healthy multicellular organism serve the priorities and plans of the whole organism-sometimes to the detriment of their individual survival. 4 The functions of any level in a biological system then only make sense in relation to the dynamics of the larger system, including the regulatory processes organized at higher levels. The principle of biological relativity, developed by physiologist Denis Noble (117)(118)(119), argues that in biological systems causal chains can begin anywhere within the system or hierarchy.…”

“…We use the term 'ecological' here in a way that is related directly to ecology [as the study of biological organisms in relationship to their physical environments (2); see (3,4)] but with the recognition that for humans, the environments in which we are embedded are fundamentally social and cultural. What flows through these organism-environment systems is not just energy or material (as is the case in typical ecological analysis) but also information, which is essentially relational (5).…”