Offering you a couple of more challenging discussions of how we evaluate and describe our patients' problems today. Though we frequently refer to our "biopsychosocial fomulations", how often can we truly divide the "bio-" from the "psycho-", and what does it say about our perspectives on psychiatric illness that we attempt to? Kendler, I believe, writes about the limitations of the biopsychosocial model in explaining illness, and Tavakoli, about its limitations in helping us describe and understand our patients. Both offer some alternative verbiage for the task at hand.
Kendler--Explanatory models
Tavakoli--Current Methods of Assessment
I found the Kendler article to be a hard read - turgid prose, abstruse syntax.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the Tavakoli article, I don't really agree that the concept itself "reinforces the stigma that psychiatric diseases are volitional, and not medical issues".
What I did find useful was his reminder of the Johns Hopkins model, with its emphasis on 4 levels of understanding ("perspectives"). This model is very appropriate as we attempt to develop a "formulation".