Psychiatry

Current psychiatry follows a biological model, which means that the causes of mental discomfort are considered to be somatic. Over the years, the illusion of finding solutions to the pain of existing in the neuronal circuits, has led to the fact that there is hardly any questioning that moods are cured with psychopharmacological treatments.

In this way, creativity in seeking solutions to vital problems is reduced because there is little the patient can do: it is not up to them to become distressed, to be unable to sleep, to stop doing something they don't really want to do, to be inhibited to such an extent that they avoid doing things they really wants to do or become isolated from others. It doesn't matter what they feels, says or don't say. It doesn't matter what their story is or how they explain what is happening to them.

Creativity in seeking solutions to vital problems is reduced because there is little the patient can do

© Frank Mckenna, via Unsplash.

Psychoanalytical and systemic orientations have long denounced this trend that was taking over Psychiatry. At the start of the 2000s, medical voices emerged that questioned the biological model. Today we are witnessing a new era, which has come to be called post-psychiatry which acknowledges many models and trends but shares a disbelief in Psychiatry as a social control of maladaptive behaviours and in the Antipsychiatry of the late 70's which questioned the use of medicine.

Current psychiatry follows a biological model, which means that the causes of mental discomfort are considered to be somatic.

Post-psychiatry is about giving the patient a voice, that their rights are respected and validated. It is also about taking into account the social context and manoeuvring with it in the knowledge that there are very different ways of dealing with suffering and that the patient is disoriented. Post-psychiatry seeks to improve things, it wants to be more useful to the people it cares for and to society, without clinging to doctrines or beliefs that are far removed from what happens to a person in a given context.