Abstract
Whitley's article ‘Is psychiatry a religion?’ 1 makes interesting reading.
It can only, however, be a sustainable charge if there were no substance to the assumption that mental illnesses are real illnesses which do require treatment or prevention.
In fact, modern neuro-imaging and neuroscience have clarified that mental illness is a consequence of abnormal brain function which can be demonstrated and which also does lead to abnormal pathological changes in the brain; 2 witness the reduction in size of the Hipocampus in patients with depression, 3 and post-traumatic stress disorder 4 and the loss of grey matter in schizophrenia. 5 Hence doctors put into place programs to identify patients and treat them early, in order to reduce such deleterious effects of disease.
The only way in which preventive programs can be carried out is by informing society that the issues exist; hence the need for publicity campaigns. This is common sense public health policy, not proselytism.
Clinical trials have shown medication to be efficacious in psychotic illness and depression. Such treatment depends on a standard of proof based on rational measurement, not the faith demanded by religion.
Regarding the religious texts, it is necessary that there be a codification of medical knowledge, hence texts such as DSM IV.
Debates between biological and social psychiatrists may be parodied as divisions between liberal and traditional wings of a religion, but then, similar debates occur in politics.
Our view is that psychiatry is part of medicine, which deals with real biological diseases, with a pathology and treatment of their own, and the classification of disease, the preventive work, and the treatment of the illness follows the pattern of all branches of medicine.
Psychiatry follows the ways in which human beings carry out business in any sphere of life – religious, medical or political.
Footnotes