Neuropsychiatry - Summary of The Arguments For Neuropsychiatry

Summary of The Arguments For Neuropsychiatry

Diseases of the body have a physical manifestation that can often be caused by internal factors, external factors, or a combination of the two. Mental disorders should be no different and when together neurology and psychiatry's aim was to show that this was the case. Psychiatry departed the union preferring ideology over empiricism, including very environmentally-based etiology as well as espousing that the mind was something fundamentally different from the brain. Neurologists, however, finding no physiopathology for certain disorders left them to the psychiatrists, while themselves pursuing the diseases with clear physiopathology.

However, the cleavage between mind and brain and the causal dichotomies are argued not to be veridical. Psychiatric disorders are increasingly showing organic manifestation and demonstrate causation from something as distant as culture. Thus the reasons for the initial division are argued not to be useful or real ones. The two specialties are both dealing with disorders of the same system. Biological psychiatry and behavioral neurology show how the boundaries are being blurred. It is argued that there can be no objection to a reunion on philosophical or scientific grounds. However, there may be reasons to question whether neuropsychiatry would be practically possible. The differences in patient management, knowledge base and skill competency between neurology and psychiatry mean that being proficient in both may be impossible.