good day sunshine

I’ve just finished supporting the preparations and running of a weeklong event – a comprehensive course in geriatric medicine. I’m a bit slaphappy with exhaustion. Am sitting in a pub beside an open door, looking out onto a rare blue sky and sunshine here in Edinburgh. People are wandering the pavements, enjoying the weather. I can feel my tension melting away as I slide into a weekend unencumbered by overtime.  

One of the speakers at the course was a psychiatrist, who apparently began his session by inviting the delegates to boo at a picture of Rene Descartes. The 18^th century philosopher introduced a theory whereby mind and body were regarded as separate entities, which arguably grew into our modern paradigm of biological reductionism.

I wasn’t in the conference hall for most of this presentation, so I can only report secondhand. However I did witness the speaker’s closing remarks in which he plead for a greater consideration of the psycho-social model of mental health. Not an easy stance to take in a room full of medical consultants.

It made me think about the anti-psychiatry movement, and the point made by one of the speakers at the ISPSUK conference a few weeks back. “I’m not against psychiatry,” she said. “I’m against bad psychiatry.” Bad psychiatry imposes itself upon the patient, regards its own perceptions as superiour to the perceptions of the patient, and abuses the power it hold over the life and wellbeing of the patient. Or should I say, the person who finds themselves placed in the role of patient.

Bad psychiatry includes professionals who are unwilling to consider that professional opinion is not gospel truth, and who are unable to imagine that other perspectives and experiences may be equally valid – even the ones that are conventionally labelled as insane.

But I must remember that there are good psychiatrists as well, motivated by compassion and curiosity, and who are willing to engage in dialogue and mutual learning.

To be honest, I don’t know where the speaker at the event falls on the spectrum of good and bad psychiatry. I don’t know his work sufficiently to hold court on this point. Inciting hostility by booing a long-dead philosopher seems a bit of an unnecessary step – though it probably did make his point in the minds of those present. Dislodging assumptive paradigms takes a little drama to step out of the box in which we normally reside. Meanwhile, he namechecked the psycho-social approach to mental health and asked the doctors present to consider its role in the bigger picture – and hence he gets a gold star on today’s calendar.

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash