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Prospects for a scientific psychiatry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2015

F.K. Goodwin  and
S.N. Ghaemi
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Extract

Herman van Praag has made major contributions to the scientific and conceptual development of psychiatry. Despite progress in delineating reliable diagnostic criteria, our classification system ignores clinical insights available from patients' subjective experiences of illness. Hence a ‘coarsening of diagnosis’ has occurred, weakening the nosologic infrastructure of scientific psychiatry. This paper will discuss these ideas and emphasize the central role of psychopharmacology in advancing psychiatry, with lithium's discovery as a paradigm.

Keywords

Sciencepsychiatrymethodologynosologybipolar disorderlithiumpsychopharmacologyhistorymanic depressive illness
Type
Research Article
Information
Acta Neuropsychiatrica , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , June 1997 , pp. 49 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

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