Essential Philosophy of Psychiatry

In recent years there has been a major move within psychiatry to foster a deeper understanding of the conceptual underpinnings of mental health. This new approach has drawn in equal measure on both the humanities and medicine. Essential Philosophy if Psychiatry is both an introduction to, and a summary of a rapidly growing field. It is the first concise introduction to what is a contested field, written by one of the people driving it forward. Because recent philosophy of psychiatry has drawn from moral philosophy, the philosophy of mind and language, and the philosophy of science, it is difficult to get a clear overview of the field. This book does just that. It is divided into three parts: Values, Meanings and Facts. In addition, there is a short chapter of conclusions, a glossary of philosophical terms and a guide to further reading. For anyone looking for an accessible, undaunting introduction to this field, this is the essential text.

PART I - VALUES
1. Anti-psychiatry, values and the philosophy of psychiatry
1.1 The debate between 'values in' and values out' accounts of mental illness
1.2 Putting the debate into context
1.3 A biological teleological model of mental illness
1.4 Mild cognitive impairment: a case study in philosophy of psychiatry
2. Values, psychiatric ethics and clinical judgement
2.1 A toolkit for ethical reasoning in medicine and psychiatry?
2.2 Judgement and the broader framework of Values Based Practice
2.3 The role of judgement in the Four Principles approach to medical ethics
PART II - MEANINGS
3. Understanding psychopathology
3.1 Jaasperes on the role of understanding in psychiatry
3.2 The attempt to understand psychopathology in recent philosophy of psychiatry
4. Theorising about meaning for mental health care
4.1 Cognitivism, the mind and inner states
4.2 The discursive turn, social constructionism and dementia
4.3 A Wittgensteinian account of meaning
PART III - FACTS
5. The validity of psychiatric classification
5.1 Facts, values and psychiatric validity
5.2 Two complications for psychiatric classification
5.3 Lessons from the philosophy of science
6. The relation of Evidence Based Medicine and tacit knowledge in clinical judgement
6.1 The presence of Evidence Based Medicine in psychiatry
6.2 Hume's challenge to induction
6.3 Responses to Hume
6.4 The role of individual judgement in induction