Psychiatry as a Medical Discipline: Epistemological and Theoretical Issues

Psychiatry is concerned with "mental disorders" intended as dysfunctions of the mind; however, as a medical discipline, psychiatry follows the organic medical model, which is concerned with the pathology of functions in the body. This problematic and equivocal positioning has led contemporary psychiatry to implicitly operate in an epistemic void and to perpetuate fundamental theoretical and operational issues that present great ethical implications and create more illness than effective treatment and relief. Nevertheless, the discipline continues to operate worldwide, enjoying a high degree of institutional support and social legitimization. This article illustrates the main epistemological and theoretical issues of psychiatry, the "mind" as its object of study, and psychiatric diagnosis, classification, and treatment. It concludes with a discussion of the implications of abandoning psychiatry's biological framework in mental health care, and the possibility for psychiatry to find its own specific, unique, and legitimate space of knowledge and practice.