Education and debate

21 Kinsey AC, Pomeroy WB, Martin CE, Gebhard PH. Sexual behavior in the 26 Fenton K, Korovessis C, Johnson AM, McCadden A, McManus S, Wellings
human female. Philadelphia: WB Saunders, 1953. K, et al. Sexual behaviour in Britain: reported sexually transmitted infec-
22 Masters WH, Johnson VE. Human sexual response. Boston: Little Brown, tions and prevalent Chlamydia trachomatis infection. Lancet
1966. 2001;358:1851-4.
23 Johnson AM, Wadsworth J, Wellings K, Field J. Sexual attitudes and lifestyles. 27 Althof S, Seftel A. The evaluation and management of erectile
Oxford: Blackwell, 1994. dysfunction. Psychiatr Clin North Am 1995;18:171-2.
24 Johnson AM, Mercer CH, Erens B, Copas AJ, McManus S, Wellings K, et 28 Feldman H, Goldstein I, Hatzichristou DG, Krane RJ, McKinlay JB. Impo-
al. Sexual behaviour in Britain: partnerships, practices, and HIV risk tence and its medical and psychosocial correlates: results of the
behaviours. Lancet 2001;358:1835-42. Massachusetts Male Aging Study. J Urol 1994;151:54-61.
25 Wellings K, Nanchahal K, MacDowall W, McManus S, Erens B, Mercer 29 Lauman E, Paik A, Rosen R. Sexual dysfunction in the US: prevalence
CH, et al. Sexual behaviour in Britain: early heterosexual experience. and predictors. JAMA 1999;281:537-44.
Lancet 2001;358:1843-50. 30 Marcuse H. Eros and civilization. Boston: Beacon Press, 1955.

The limits of psychiatry

Duncan Double

Much of the expansion of psychiatry in the past few decades has been based on a biomedical model
that encourages drug treatment to be seen as a panacea for multiple problems. Psychiatrist Duncan
Double is sceptical of this approach and suggests that psychiatry should temper and complement a
biological view with psychological and social understanding, thus recognising the uncertainties of
clinical practice

Norfolk Mental The increasing accountability of doctors following the

Health Care NHS
Trust, Carrobreck,
deaths of children in the Bristol Royal Infirmary’s pae- Summary points
Norwich NR6 5BE diatric cardiac surgical unit has focused attention on
Duncan Double the foundations of medical practice. Ian Kennedy, who
consultant psychiatrist Expectations of solutions to mental health
chaired the Bristol inquiry,1 provides a direct link with
problems continue to rise
dbdouble@ earlier cultural critics of medicine—such as Ivan
dbdouble.co.uk
Illich—in his Reith lectures in 1980 about “unmasking” This raises the question of the legitimacy of
BMJ 2002;324:900–4
medicine.2 psychiatric interventions for common personal
Illich made specific comments about psychiatry in and social problems
his critique of medicalisation and the limits to
medicine.3 He attended the 1977 world federation for Much of the expansion of psychiatry has been
mental health conference in Vancouver, Canada, based on a biomedical model
where he debated the issue of whether mental health
professionals are necessary.4 He maintained that “do it This approach encourages drug treatment to be
yourself ” care was preferable. The central concern of seen as a panacea for multiple problems
Illich’s work was the legitimacy of professional power,
whether in health systems or in other systems, such as Refocusing psychiatry on the patient as a person
education. emphasises the uncertainty of psychiatric practice
There is no direct equivalent in general medicine of
the “anti-psychiatry” movement, commonly seen as a
passing phase in psychiatry and associated with the not be imposed on anyone, as this view is not consist-
names of R D Laing and Thomas Szasz.5 Illich came ent with a practice in which compulsory treatment has
from outside medicine, whereas the proponents of been integral. It was only after the Mental Health
anti-psychiatry came from within psychiatry, even if Treatment Act 1930 that voluntary treatment became
their influence was subsequently marginalised by an option in Britain. None the less, because of the
mainstream psychiatrists. potential for abuse, a critical perspective that
The cultural role of psychiatry is more obviously scrutinises the role of coercion in psychiatric
open to criticism than is the case in the rest of treatment is still required in the current debate about
medicine. This is because of its direct relation to the reform of the Mental Health Act in the United
social control through mental health legislation. Kingdom.
Although diagnosis of mental illness should not be I outline here the expansion of psychiatry over the
predicated on social conformity, in practice this crite- past half century and offer a sceptical view of this
rion may be applied. During the 1970s and 1980s, for development.
example, reports that the authorities in the Soviet
Union were incarcerating substantial numbers of
Growth in mental health service activity
dissidents in mental asylums caused widespread
concern in the West. Over recent years, the use of psy-
and technology
chiatry as a tool of state repression in China seems to Despite the reduction in psychiatric beds in England
be increasing.6 over recent years (fig 1), mental health service activity
A modern critique of psychiatry needs to move on has increased considerably. The annual number of
from the perspective exemplified by Illich and the antidepressant prescriptions, for example, has more
proponents of anti-psychiatry that psychiatry should than doubled over the past seven years (fig 2). Similarly,

900 BMJ VOLUME 324 13 APRIL 2002 bmj.com

 Education and debate

As more resources have been provided for mental

No of available beds 20 000 health services, more resources are perceived to be
Secure unit Short stay Long stay
18 000 needed.8 Disillusionment is inevitable in a system of
16 000 mental health care where an increase in professional
14 000 staffing cannot completely resolve the perceived unmet
12 000 need of the population.
10 000 Demand is unavoidably high as mental health
8 000
problems are common. The proportion of men and
6 000
women with a neurotic disorder in a given week was
found to be 12.3% and 19.5% respectively in the
4 000
psychiatric morbidity survey, the largest epidemiologi-
2 000
cal study of the prevalence of psychiatric disorders
0
conducted in the United Kingdom.9
88

89

90

91

92

93

94

95

96

97
19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19
As the expectation of solutions to mental health
Year
problems rises through the increasing availability of
Fig 1 Average daily number of available mental illness beds in the mainstay psychiatric treatments (psychotropic
England (excluding beds for children and elderly people). Source: drugs and “talking” therapies, such as counselling), the
NHS hospital inpatient data
traditional boundaries of psychiatric disorder have
broadened. Everyday problems regarded as the
province of other social spheres become “medicalised”
25 by psychiatry. Mental health care may function as a
No of prescriptions (millions)

panacea for many different personal and social

20 problems.
The diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity dis-
15 order in children, for example, has increased dramati-
cally over recent years, paralleled by an increase in the
10 prescription of stimulant drugs in the United States.10
This trend is also apparent in England and is likely to
5 be reinforced by recent guidelines from the National
Institute for Clinical Evidence.11 The behaviour of chil-
0 dren in whom attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder
1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 is identified overlaps with behaviours commonly
Year displayed by children when they feel frustrated,
anxious, bored, abandoned, or in some other way
Fig 2 Annual number of prescriptions for antidepressants in
England. Data from NHS prescription cost analysis stressed. The obvious critical view is that the social
phenomenon of mass drugging of children indicates
not a genuine increase in mental disorder but rather a
displacement strategy for the difficult task of improving
3500
No of consultants

family and school life. It is indeed likely that recourse

3000 to drug treatment discourages self responsibility and
thereby exacerbates the underlying difficulties that it is
2500
supposed to remedy.
2000 Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder has also
become established over the past 10 years as an adult
1500
disorder, and it is now regarded by some as the most
1000 common chronic undiagnosed psychiatric disorder in
adults.12
500
The expansion of psychiatry is also reflected in the
0 marketing of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors
75

77

79

81

83

85

87

89

91

93

95

97

99

for neurotic conditions other than depression. Paroxet-

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

Year ine, the drug with the greatest net ingredient cost to the
Fig 3 Number of consultants in psychiatry in England over past 25 NHS in England in 2000, is now approved in the
years. Data from NHS medical workforce statistics United states for use in multiple disorders: depression,
generalised anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder,
panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and
the number of consultant psychiatrists has more than post-traumatic stress disorder. Selective serotonin
doubled over the past 22 years (fig 3). reuptake inhibitors have even been promoted and
As the number of psychiatric beds has decreased, used as lifestyle drugs.13
the number of people in prison with a mental disorder Two disorders illustrate further the process of
has risen, with a higher proportion of women inmates medicalisation. Firstly, social anxiety disorder could be
having mental health problems than men.7 Authors in seen as the process of medicalising shyness. The disor-
the United States suggest that prisons are replacing der is characterised by a marked and persistent fear of
mental hospitals, but the data could be explained social or performance situations in which embarrass-
either as the “psychiatricisation” of criminality or as the ment may occur. It is said to be the third most common
increasing diagnosis of mental illness in prisoners not psychiatric disorder in the United States, after major
previously recognised as being mentally ill. depression and alcohol dependence. Lifetime preva-

BMJ VOLUME 324 13 APRIL 2002 bmj.com 901

Education and debate

Box 1: Nine beliefs summarising the Box 3: Summary of “post-psychiatry” (from

perspective of the neo-Kraepelinian approach19 Bracken and Thomas23)
• Psychiatry is a branch of medicine • Faith in the ability of science and technology to
• Psychiatry should use modern scientific methods resolve human and social problems is diminishing
and base its practice on scientific knowledge • This creates challenges for medicine, particularly
• Psychiatry treats people who are sick and need traditional psychiatry
treatment for mental illness • Psychiatry must move beyond its “modernist”
• A boundary exists between normal and sick people framework to engage with recent government
• Mental illness is not a myth; there are many mental proposals and the growing power of service users
illnesses. It is the task of scientific psychiatry to • Post-psychiatry emphasises social and cultural
investigate the causes, diagnosis, and treatment of contexts, places ethics before technology, and works to
these mental illnesses minimise medical control of coercive interventions
• The focus of psychiatric physicians should focus on
the biological aspects of mental illness
• There should be an explicit and intentional concern
with diagnosis and classification
Diagnoses are not diseases
• Diagnostic criteria should be codified, and a The number of diagnostic categories has increased in
legitimate and valued area of research should be to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
validate such criteria by various techniques. Psychiatry of the American Psychiatric Association from 106 in
departments in medical schools should teach these
DSM-I in 1952 to 357 in DSM-IV in 1994.17 This
criteria and not belittle them, as has been the case for
many years increase has occurred in the context of attempts to
• Statistical techniques should be used in research make psychiatric diagnosis more reliable by the intro-
efforts directed at improving the reliability and validity duction in 1980 of DSM-III.
of diagnosis and classification DSM-III encouraged the reification of psychologi-
cal conditions. Social phobia and post-traumatic stress
disorder, for example, were first included in inter-
national classifications in DSM-III.
lence has been estimated at 13.3%.14 Some claim that Confidence in psychiatric classification was damp-
the condition is not just ordinary shyness and that it is ened by the classic study of Rosenhan.18 In this,
a common public health problem.15 None the less, “pseudo-patients,” who were accomplices of the
although definitions of the syndromes of shyness experimenter, gained admission to different hospitals,
and social phobia may differ, the distinction is difficult each presenting with a single complaint—hearing a
to make empirically. Furthermore, we should be scepti- voice that said “empty,” “hollow,” or “thud.” On
cal about the potency and benefits of drugs for this admission to the psychiatric ward, each pseudo-patient
condition. stopped simulating any symptom of abnormality. All of
Secondly, the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress dis- them received a psychiatric diagnosis, mainly schizo-
order was officially recognised after an essentially phrenia. Rosenhan concluded from this experiment
political struggle to acknowledge the suffering of the
Vietnam war veterans. Subsequently, the diagnosis has
become increasingly associated with less extreme
experiences, encouraged by compensation claims for
psychological damage. However, medicalisation of
traumatic human suffering runs the risk of reducing it
to a technical problem. Providing debriefing and coun-
selling, for example, may not be the most appropriate
focus of humanitarian relief operations in wars and
other disasters.16

Box 2: Assumptions of Meyer’s

biopsychological model22
• The boundary between mentally well and mentally
ill people is fluid because normal people can become
ill if exposed to sufficiently severe trauma
• Mental illness is conceived along a continuum of
severity from neurosis through borderline conditions
NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

to psychosis
• An untoward mixture of noxious environment and
psychic conflict causes mental illness
• The mechanisms by which mental illness emerges in
an individual are psychologically mediated
• Postmodernity provides doctors with an opportunity R D Laing: “The experience and behaviour that gets labelled
to redefine their roles and responsibilities schizophrenic is a special strategy that a person invents in order to
live in an unlivable situation”

902 BMJ VOLUME 324 13 APRIL 2002 bmj.com

 Education and debate

nating the meaning of people’s distress and the

psychological and social origins of their difficulties.
An adverse consequence of the biomedical model
is that it encourages a tendency to believe that people
are powerless to do anything about their condition.
Such an implication may be obvious, for example, in

UPSTATE MEDICAL UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES LIBRARY

the case of alcoholism,20 but the same principle also
applies to other mental health problems, even psycho-
sis, despite such symptoms and behaviour being more
difficult to understand.
The somatic model has always tended to dominate
psychiatric thinking, but psychological and psychody-
namic explanations were more widely accepted over 50
years ago. Adolf Meyer, the foremost American
psychiatrist in the first half of the 20th century, insisted
on regarding his philosophical approach to psychiatry,
with its emphasis on the understanding of the person,
Thomas Szasz: “Classifying thoughts, feelings, and behaviors as as an advance over the mechanistic philosophy of the
diseases is a logical and semantic error” 19th century.21 His work is now largely neglected in the
modern biological consensus in psychiatry. He warned
against going beyond statements about the person to
wishful “neurologising tautology” about the brain (box
2 summarises the assumptions of his biopsychological
view22).
Psychiatry needs to return to a biopsychological
view to limit its excesses—in other words, it needs to
temper and complement a biological view with
psychological and social understanding, thus recognis-
ing the uncertainties of clinical practice. Such an
approach conforms to the new direction that has been
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE

called “post-psychiatry” (box 3).23

The Critical Psychiatry Network

The Critical Psychiatry Network has recently been
formed to provide a network to develop a critique of
Alfred Meyer: “A diagnosis usually does justice to only one part of the current psychiatric system. Its aim is to avoid the
the facts and is merely a convenience of nomenclature” polarisation of psychiatry and anti-psychiatry. Anti-
psychiatry may have failed because its main propo-
that psychiatric diagnosis is subjective and does not nents were ultimately more interested in personal and
reflect inherent patient characteristics. As a follow up,
staff of a research and teaching hospital were informed
that at some time during the following three months,
one or more pseudo-patients would attempt to be
admitted. No such attempt was made. Yet about 10% of
193 real patients were suspected by two or more staff
members to be pseudo-patients. After the publication
of Rosenhan’s study, psychiatric diagnoses have
become more rigidly defined by operational criteria as
in DSM-III.
This attempt to make psychiatric diagnosis more
reliable was associated with a return to a biomedical
model of mental illness. The approach has been called
neo-Kraepelinian, as it promotes many of the ideas
associated with the views of Emil Kraepelin, regarded
as the founder of modern psychiatry (box 1).19
Diagnosis does not need to be exclusively in terms
of a biomedical model. It can be about creating an
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE

understanding of the reasons for a patient’s presenta-

tion. Indeed, focusing on the somatic nature of a hypo-
thetical underlying disorder tends to deny the patient
as a person and objectifies patients so that they become
merely bodies needing treatment. Although biological
explanations are important—as the brain is the
substrate for cognition, emotions, and behaviour— Emil Kraepelin: “Clinical observation must be supplemented by
understanding personal action is not helped by elimi- thorough examination of healthy and diseased brains”

BMJ VOLUME 324 13 APRIL 2002 bmj.com 903

Education and debate

spiritual growth. Moreover, its message became diluted prescribing of psychotropic medication in preschoolers. JAMA
2000;283:1025-30.
and confused by combining conflicting viewpoints. The 11 Lord J, Paisley S. The clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of methylpheni-
Critical Psychiatry Network is dedicated to establishing date for hyperactivity in childhood. London: National Institute for Clinical
a constructive framework for renewing mental health Excellence, 2000. (Version 2.)
12 Wender PH. Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in adults. Psychiatr
practice (www.criticalpsychiatry.co.uk). Clin North Am 1998;21;761-74.
13 Charlton BG. Psychopharmacology and the human condition. J R Soc
Competing interests: None declared. Med 1998;91:699-701.
14 Kessler RC, McGonagle KA, Ahao S, Nelson CB, Hughes M, Eshleman S,
et al. Lifetime and 12-month prevalence of DSM-III-R psychiatric disor-
1 Bristol Royal Infirmary. Learning from Bristol: the report of the public inquiry ders in the United States. Results from the national comorbidity survey.
into children’s heart surgery at the Bristol Royal Infirmary 1984-1995. Arch Gen Psychiatry 1994;51:8-19.
London: Stationery Office, 2001. (Cm 5207.) www.bristol-inquiry.org.uk/ 15 Stein MB, Gorman JM. Unmasking social anxiety disorder. J Psychiatry
2 Kennedy I. The unmasking of medicine. London: Granada, 1983. Neurosci 2001:26;185-9.
3 Illich I. Limits to medicine. Medical nemesis: the expropriation of health. 16 Bracken PJ, Petty C, eds. Rethinking the trauma of war. London: Free
London: Marion Boyers, 1995. Association, 1998.
4 Beiser M, Fleming JAE, Kirkpatrick D, Remick RA, eds. Today’s priorities in 17 American Psychiatric Assocation. Diagnostic and statistical manual of men-
mental health. Miami, FL: Symposia Specialists, 1978. tal disorders. 4th ed. Washington: APA, 1994.
5 Tantum D. The anti-psychiatry movement. In: Berrios GE, Freeman H, 18 Rosenhan DL. On being sane in insane places. Science 1973;179:250-8.
eds. 150 Years of British psychiatry, 1841-1991. London: Gaskell, 1991. 19 Klerman GL. The evolution of a scientific nosology. In: Shershow, JC.
6 Munro R. Judicial psychiatry in China and its political abuses. Columbia Schizophrenia: science and practice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Journal of Asian Law 1999;13. www.columbia.edu/cu/asiaweb/
Press, 1978.
JAL001_1.htm
20 Jellinek EM. The disease concept of alcoholism. New Haven, CT: Hillhouse
7 Singleton N, Meltzer H, Gatward R. Psychiatric morbidity among prisoners in
England and Wales. London: Stationery Office, 1998. Press, 1960.
8 Richman A, Barry A. More and more is less and less. The myth of massive 21 Winters E, ed. The collected papers of Adolf Meyer. Vols 1-4. Baltimore: Johns
psychiatric need. Br J Psychiatry 1985;146:164-8. Hopkins Press, 1951-2.
9 Meltzer H, Gill B, Petticrew M, Hinds K. The prevalence of psychiatricmorbid- 22 Wilson M. DSM-III and the transformation of American psychiatry: a
ity among adults living in private households. London: HMSO, 1995. (OPCS history. Am J Psychiatry 1993;150:399-410.
surveys of psychiatric morbidity in Great Britain, report No 1.) 23 Bracken P, Thomas P. Post-psychiatry: a new direction for mental health.
10 Zito JM, Safer DJ, dosReis S, Gardner JF, Boles J, Lynch F. Trends in BMJ 2001; 322:724-7.

When I use a word . . .

Medicalization

Take any noun or adjective. Add an -ize to make a verb dictionary until 1987, when it was defined in Jonathon
(see BMJ 2001;323:1173). Now change the -ize to Green’s Dictionary of Jargon as a sociological term
-ization. That makes another noun. meaning “the increasing practice of attaching medical
Some dislike this neologistic method, because they labels to behaviour considered as socially or morally
think that it is nasty, modern, and American to boot. undesirable.” These definitions imply that by
They are wrong. The habit may well be nasty, but it has categorizing something as a disease, including natural
a long pedigree and the earliest examples are English. processes, such as birth, the menopause, and the loss
Of the 1140 or so -izations listed in the Oxford English of beauty that accompanies ageing, you make its effects
Dictionary, the earliest, exorcization and canonization, susceptible of being cured or at least ameliorated.
go back to the 14th century; other early examples But medicalization was a well established idea long
include organization and solemnization (15C),
before the word appeared in the dictionaries. It was,
cauterization and cicatrization (16C), and authorization
after all, highlighted by Ivan Illich in his 1975 diatribe
and embolization (17C). And authors cited in the
Medical Nemesis, a book that received wide publicity,
earliest examples include Coleridge, De Quincy,
and vilification, at the time. According to Illich, doctors
Donne, John Evelyn, Joseph Priestley, and Thomas
Addison. However, it is true that since 1800 the decade had medicalized various aspects of life, including
by decade rate of introduction of -izations, compared ageing, death, pain, patients’ expectations, and healing
with other words, has outstripped the expected rate, and preventive therapies. This idea was part of a larger
with a peak of 132 new citations in the 1880s thesis: that the things that people traditionally did or
(including atropinization, digitalization, and organized for themselves were being expropriated by
keratinization), and a disproportionate increase in the governmental institutions and the so called disabling
rate of coinage since 1950. professions. Institutionalized health
Medicalization was coined in the 1960s. Here is an care—medicalization—impaired health in the same way
early example, in which the inverted commas that that “schools impeded learning; transportation
surround the word imply its recency: “Sexually active contrived to make feet redundant; communications
teen-age girls have a physical examination by a warped conversation” (BMJ 1995;311:1652-3). Indeed,
pediatrician, a pelvic examination by a gynecologist, a it is a little surprising that “educationalization,”
blood count, urinalysis, tine test and dental survey, ‘‘transportization,” and “communicationalization” have
followed by home visits by a public-health nurse. . . . not been coined to mirror these ideas. When you next
[This] represents a ‘medicalization’ of sex that is see these words, forget that you read them here first.
probably self-defeating.” (New Engl J Med In his robust 1978 response to Illich, Medical Hubris,
1970;283:709). David Horobin pointed out that others had
But dictionaries do not incorporate new words expropriated healing long before doctors did, and
immediately, in case they go away. The Oxford English without the same benefits. But the -ization technique
Dictionary, for example, didn’t define medicalization tends to create ugly words, and ugly words tend to be
until 1997 (in the third volume of its Additions Series): used pejoratively. Medicalization, despite its often
“To give a medical character to; to involve medicine or
practical benefits, remains a dirty idea, partly because it
medical workers in; to view or interpret in (esp.
is regarded as a dirty word.
unnecessarily) medical terms.” Indeed, as far as I can
determine, medicalization did not appear in any Jeff Aronson clinical pharmacologist, Oxford

904 BMJ VOLUME 324 13 APRIL 2002 bmj.com