Informing psychiatry with neuroscience and philosophy: becoming well through partnerships

Abstract

Background: A key question for psychiatrists in the 21st century is how we can deliver quality care to our patients in an informed manner. To address that we need good evidence on the nature of mental disorders and their effective treatment and accurate prognosis. The inconvenient truth of psychiatry is that mental illness is still underdiagnosed and undertreated globally. According to World Bank and the World Health Organization, there are up to 600 million people in theworld suffering from mental illness, of whom 50–90% do not get any treatment. In many countries, mental health care attracts less than 1% of the total healthcare budget. Psychiatry continues to search for a balanced and effective approach to mental illness. During the last couple of centuries, psychiatry has been swinging between ‘brainlessness’ (neglecting neurobiology) and ‘mindlessness’ (overfocusing on brain sciences) and continues to struggle with ambivalence towards culture and spirituality. This presentation reviews developments over the last three decades in neuropsychiatry, neuroimaging, psychopharmacology, philosophy of psychiatry and related fields, including works by the speaker, to highlight both challenges and opportunities for psychiatry to partner with other disciplines and how these challenges impact on psychiatric research and service delivery. This lecture argues that psychiatry of the 21st century is going to be an interdisciplinary partnership that puts patients first, supports new models of service delivery, reconnects minds with brains in research, contributes to general skills training in medical education and promotes an open society that understands and supports mental health. The future of mental health is one that is informed by neuroscience, philosophy of science and mind and ethics and is evidence-based, whole-person focused, client-centered and interdisciplinary driven.