The Position of Psychiatry in the Understanding of Human Disease

Ill Health in Two Contrasting Societies, Particularly Non-psychiatric Morbidity among Those with a Psychiatric Diagnosis

“…The corresponding findings for the chronic psychotics in my study indicate that the higher susceptibility to somatic illness is probably a general feature for persons with any psychiatric complaint. These points of view correspond well with the opinions based on clinical experience of Engel (1959), Holmes et al (1957), Fabrega (1975, Rahe (1972), andHinkle (1961).…”

Illness representations among people with non-epileptic seizures attending a neuropsychiatry clinic: a qualitative study based on the self-regulation model

“…[14][15][16] It has also been observed that, whether scientifically right or wrong, people conceptualise and discuss illness in scientific and dualistic terms. 12,17,18 This concurs with the long-standing observation that biomedicine is part of western culture 19 and that it is a dominant folk model of illness. 20 However, the medical model does not easily accommodate somatisation disorders, the existence of which, according to Kirmayer and Young, 21 is a reflection of the 'persistent mind-body dualism of western medicine' (p. 422); somatisation is a residual category between the somatic and the psychic which can accommodate the recalcitrant patient, who fits neither category, into the medical system.…”

The Need for a New Medical Model: A Challenge for Biomedicine

“…Thus taxonomy progresses from symptoms, to clusters of symptoms, to syndromes, and finally to diseases with specific pathogenesis and pathology. This sequence accurately describes the successful application of the scientific method to the elucidation and the classification into discrete entities of disease in its generic sense (5,6). The merit of such an approach needs no argument.…”