Read on Twitter
Question to the general public. How do you perceive the cause of mental illness? Let me know your thoughts and please retweet.
The evidence base suggests that it is a mixture of all three, with general patterns lending different importance dependent on which specific diagnosis, but we must always remember that any explanation is only helpful if it can lend to improving a patients life.
For example we know that schizophrenia has a genetic link, but that not all in a family will develop it. We also know that trauma is heavily involved, as is a higher risk in poverty. The cause is complex and thus so is the treatment.
There are conditions that have a more "biological" basis, i.e ADHD, with a huge genetic predictor and links with low birth weight, and on the other end of the scale the poorly named "personality disorders" which I see as 99% trauma/social but have a small genetic link.
The take away, and feel free to debate it, is that any good understanding of illness cannot reduce something so complex to one school of thought. Remember, we once thought psychosis was demonic possession.
Regardless of the results, discussion is important. Psychiatry can always learn and should always listen.
And in my view, as people may rightly ask:
For me the cause is what is most suitable and evidenced for the person infront of me, and that has the best chance of offering an avenue for recovery. Usually this lends more toward a psychological and social intervention, even if bio
For me the cause is what is most suitable and evidenced for the person infront of me, and that has the best chance of offering an avenue for recovery. Usually this lends more toward a psychological and social intervention, even if bio
Thats not to say medications dont have a role, in severe illness they certainly do, but any doctor who feels a drug alone is treatment belongs in the 1970s where this idea died.
