|
OUR BLOGGERS
CONNECT WITH US
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
John Z. Sadler, MD, is the Daniel W. Foster, MD Professor of Medical Ethics and a Professor of Psychiatry & Clinical Sciences at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. Dr. Sadler co-edits, with K. W. M. Fulford, the Johns Hopkins University Press journal Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, and with Fulford, Giovanni Stanghellini, and Katherine Morris, co-edits the Oxford University Press book series International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry. One of the founders of the Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry, Sadler is the organization’s Treasurer. Long fascinated by the philosophical and conceptual issues in psychiatric diagnosis, Sadler is the author of Values and Psychiatric Diagnosis (Oxford University Press, 2005), editor of Descriptions and Prescriptions: Values, Mental Disorders, and the DSMs (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), and co-edited (with Osborne Wiggins and Michael A. Schwartz) Philosophical Perspectives on Psychiatric Diagnostic Classification (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994). His latest collaborative book (with Jennifer Radden, PhD) is The Virtuous Psychiatrist: Character Ethics in Psychiatric Practice (Oxford University Press, 2010).
Writers of diagnostic criteria should consider their work and all its implications. What about adding a new disorder? What might that do to epidemiological capture? Depending on the characteristics of the diagnostic criteria set, many possibilities exist.
I’ve been deeply worried about corruption and greed in psychiatry for a long time. In reading the new book from Wendell Potter, formerly head of public relations at CIGNA, my worry has escalated into panic anxiety. Before discussing Potter’s work, let me review some of the widespread greed-related corruption of recent years.
The doctor’s role is to go beyond the obvious and to detect subtle determinants. Good diagnosticians have been trained to look beneath the loud symptom and consider underlying factors.
Designers of descriptive diagnostic criteria for mental disorders face some of the same problems as fishermen. Fishermen, like nosologists, want to capture not just any fish but a particular kind. Fishermen deal with this problem in various ways.
Are psychiatrists agents of the police or doctors who care for the sick? Thomas Szasz raised this question 50 years ago in his iconic “The Myth of Mental Illness.” Psychiatry has changed in the ensuing decades, but Szasz’ question is still relevant. Why?Physicians Practice | Psychiatric Times | SearchMedica | Medical Resources
© 1996 - 2013 UBM Medica LLC, a
UBM company
Privacy Statement -
Terms of Service -
Advertising Information -
Editorial Policy Statement -
UBM Medica Network Privacy Policy