The philosophy of mental disorders is an interdisciplinary field of study that combines visions and methods of philosophy, psychology, neuroscience and ethics to analyze mental illness.
Philosophers of mental disorders are interested in examining ontological, epistemological and normative problems, all of which start from different conceptions of mental illness. adequate specification and free of subjective value.
- One wonders whether mental disorders should be understood as a form of mental dysfunction.
- The philosophy of mental disorders also examines whether mental illness is best identified as different mental entities.
- With clear criteria of inclusion and exclusion.
- Or as points in a continuum between the normal.
- And the sick.
Philosophers critical of the concept of mental disorder argue that it is not possible to assign a neutral value to mental illness. They argue that categories of disorders impose pre-existing rules and power relations.
Then there are questions about the relationship between the role that values play in the concept of mental disorder and how these values relate to the concepts of disease in general.
Philosophers who consider themselves part of the neurodiversity movement say that we should review our concept of mental illness, which should reflect the different forms of cognition that can be implemented without stigmatizing individuals who are not statistically average.
There are also epistemological problems related to the link between mental illness and diagnosis. Historically, the central theme has focused on how the nosologies (or classification patterns) of mental disorders, particularly DSM, link mental disorders to observable symptoms.
Mental dysfunction, in the DSM system, is identified by the presence or absence of a set of symptoms among a list that needs to be verified. Critics of using behavioral symptoms to diagnose mental disorders argue that symptoms are not useless without proper theory understanding of what a dysfunctional mental mechanism means.
A diagnostic system should be able to distinguish between a person with a real mental illness and a person who suffers from a problem at this stage of life. Critics argue that the DSM, as it is established today, cannot do that.
In this context, related questions arise about the nature and role of judgment in mental illness. The first is whether mental illness is a worthless concept. The noologies of mental problems try to create definitions of neutral value.
In the ideal world, the concepts selected by textbooks, such as the DSM, are supposed to reflect an underlying universal human reality. The mental disorders they contain, with a small exception, are not intended to represent regulatory value judgments culturally related to the field of science. Mind.
Michel Foucault was one of the first critics of mental health and mental health institutions. Foucault argued that psychiatric asylums have historically arisen from the application of rationality models that favored individuals in power.
This model served to exclude the many members of society from the circle marked by rational thought. Nursing homes functioned as a place for society to isolate these undesirable people and strengthen pre-existing power relationships.
They are social artifacts that serve the same sociocultural goals as our race, gender, social class and sexual orientation constructs, so mental illness would try to maintain and extend the power of certain individuals and institutions and preserve the social order. as defined by those in power.
Constructivists can take a variety of positions when talking about mental health, because the relationship between the concept of social construction and that of mental illness involves a variety of responses. On a less radical level, constructivists can argue that cultures impose ideal models of action that are used to label sets of human behavior.
Behavioral syndromes, from this point of view, can be a different concept in all cultures, each culture develops an ideal behavior theory that causes some of these sets of actions, feelings and behaviors to become diseases, while other cultures can group the syndromes into different forms according to different values.
All the behaviors we call depressive exist only because doctors have grouped such actions, for a number of reasons. The only way to explain why a set of behaviors, feelings and thoughts is grouped into a syndrome is to say that doctors created this group.
For all the behaviors typical of a heart attack, we have an easily available causal history that unifies the acts, however, mental illnesses require an independent explanation of the clinician for grouping.
From this point of view, the syndromes are similar to what Ian Hacking called interactive types, natural types have independent groups of global values, however, interactive types make people perceive themselves in a vision that has been created and established, even creating feelings and emotions. to suit this guy.
Multiple personality disorder (now dissociative identity disorder) needs to be considered as an interactive type, i. e. multiple personality disorder is not a fundamental fact of human neurology that a neuroscientist can discover.
Once the concept of multiple personality disorder is identified, many people will be identified. In this medical condition, people will be diagnosed without any underlying cause in the brain that can prove the diagnosis.
This distinction hides alternative explanations of mental illness that allow intermediate, less essentialistic and even pluralistic visions within philosophy.
In conclusion, it can be said that the philosophy of mental disorders is a perspective that teaches psychology many aspects that should be part of its way of proceeding when it comes to caring for a person outside the medical circuit and iatrogenic labels.