Peter McGuffin is Emeritus Professor of Psychiatric Genetics at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry (SGDP) Centre, at the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP), King’s College London. He was previously Director of the Centre and also served for a period as Dean and Head of the IoP. Before that he held the Chair of Psychological Medicine in Cardiff, Wales.
Being quizzed on statistics and having the complexities of genetics explained to me by Peter one-on-one is an enduring memory – one that is simultaneously distressing and comforting. This is because he is one of those people who are conspicuously intelligent and yet forever nurturing and uncritically supportive. This is exemplified by his love and mastery of horse riding, in which he is accomplished and from which he draws immense pleasure.
What drives you? Curiosity. I have always taught my juniors that in order to be a decent psychiatrist, you need to have an exceptional degree of nosiness about your patient’s biography and their mental life. Similarly, as a scientist, I have always been motivated by an urge to find things out. Of course, if your research turns out to have some benefit for mankind that is a bonus, but it is curiosity that drives decent research.
What advice would you give to your younger self? Which of my many younger selves? Probably none of them back then were the sort of people to readily take advice from the sort of person I am now.
As a psychiatrist, what have you learnt about the human condition? Many things, one of which is that much of the time we are not rational beings. We can often be helped to try to behave and think rationally as individuals. Indeed, striving to think and behave rationally is almost always a good thing, but it is often very difficult to achieve, especially within small groups such as families, and it is even harder in large groups, organisations and societies. I think most psychiatrists have realised this, but unfortunately experts in other disciplines that have more influence on society, such as politics and economics, have not. Hence wars, hence stock market crashes, hence Brexit, hence Trumpism!
Research is fundamental to psychiatry because … I have witnessed real progress both in terms of understanding causation and in improving treatments in the four decades that I have been in the trade. But, remarkably, we remain profoundly ignorant. Continuing research is vital for continued progress. Having said that, I feel compelled to re-emphasise that the best research is always going to be driven by a desire for knowledge rather than a desire for what can be translated clinically.
The topic in psychiatry I am most passionate about … not surprisingly, is the genome and its complex interplay with the environome.
What is the future of psychiatry? I hope (and would pray were I still a believer in a god) that it is to remain solidly rooted in scientific and evidence-based medicine.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
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