Scientific Psychiatry: A Novel Framework for Psychiatry Understood as a Branch of Medicine
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Date
2014-10-24
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Johns Hopkins University
Abstract
This dissertation explores the connection between medicine and psychiatry and argues for a biomedical account of mental disorder. The work begins by employing cutting-edge evolutionary theory in order to develop an account of disease that is consistent with contemporary medical theory and practice. The proposed account understands diseases to be biological malfunctions that are deemed harmful or undesirable. This scientific account of disease is then used to devise a scientifically respectable account of mental disorder. This account sees mental disorders as malfunctions in either neural or cognitive mechanisms. The project concludes by considering the potential implications of accepting this account of mental disorder for both health and social policy.
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Keywords
psychiatry, biomedicine, philosophy of science, function