What do you think?
Rate this book
Esssential Philosophy of Psychiatry
Essential Philosophy of Psychiatry is a concise introduction to the growing field of philosophy of psychiatry. Divided into three main aspects of psychiatric clinical judgement, values, meanings and facts, it examines the key debates about mental health care, and the philosophical ideas and tools needed to assess those debates, in six chapters.
In addition to outlining the state of play, Essential Philosophy of Psychiatry presents a coherent and unified approach across the different debates, characterized by a rejection of reductionism and an emphasis on the ineliminability of uncodified skilled judgement.
The first part, Values, outlines the debate about whether diagnosis of mental illness is essentially value-laden and argues that the prospects for reducing illness or disease to plainly factual matters are poor. It also explains the important role of skilled contextual judgement, rather than a principles-based deduction, in ethical judgement.
The second part, Meanings, examines the central role of understanding and a shared first person perspective, both against attempts to reduce meaning to basic information-processing mechanisms and to explain away the difficulties of understanding psychopathology in recent models of delusion.
The third part, Facts, shows the importance of uncodified clinical judgements, both in assessing the validity of psychiatric taxonomy and in the application of Evidence Based Medicine. Despite advances in the codifaction of practice and operationalism of diagnosis, an element of judgement remains in the assessment both of what, at one level, is good evidence for diagnosis and treatment and what, at a higher level, is good evidence for the validity of classification overall.
In addition to outlining the state of play, Essential Philosophy of Psychiatry presents a coherent and unified approach across the different debates, characterized by a rejection of reductionism and an emphasis on the ineliminability of uncodified skilled judgement.
The first part, Values, outlines the debate about whether diagnosis of mental illness is essentially value-laden and argues that the prospects for reducing illness or disease to plainly factual matters are poor. It also explains the important role of skilled contextual judgement, rather than a principles-based deduction, in ethical judgement.
The second part, Meanings, examines the central role of understanding and a shared first person perspective, both against attempts to reduce meaning to basic information-processing mechanisms and to explain away the difficulties of understanding psychopathology in recent models of delusion.
The third part, Facts, shows the importance of uncodified clinical judgements, both in assessing the validity of psychiatric taxonomy and in the application of Evidence Based Medicine. Despite advances in the codifaction of practice and operationalism of diagnosis, an element of judgement remains in the assessment both of what, at one level, is good evidence for diagnosis and treatment and what, at a higher level, is good evidence for the validity of classification overall.
- GenresMental HealthPsychiatry
280 pages, Paperback
First published October 25, 2007
21 people want to read
About the author
Tim Thornton
6 books1 followerLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Not to be confused with Historian Tim Thornton, Writer/Musician Tim Thornton or Yachting/IT expert Tim Thornton.
Tim Thornton completed his PhD on Wittgenstein and judgement in the History and Philosophy of Science Department of the University of Cambridge before becoming Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Warwick. He is now Professor of Philosophy and Mental Health in the newly established Institute for Philosophy, Diversity and Mental Health at the University of Central Lancashire.
Not to be confused with Historian Tim Thornton, Writer/Musician Tim Thornton or Yachting/IT expert Tim Thornton.
Tim Thornton completed his PhD on Wittgenstein and judgement in the History and Philosophy of Science Department of the University of Cambridge before becoming Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Warwick. He is now Professor of Philosophy and Mental Health in the newly established Institute for Philosophy, Diversity and Mental Health at the University of Central Lancashire.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 29, 2024
Concise, helpful and informative introduction to the topic.
Displaying 1 of 1 review