Mental illness biological factors

Psychiatric treatment of new illnesses has accelerated since the 1980s. Whereas psychiatry traditionally had been dominated by a psychodynamic perspective on illness, the field has turned its back on that tradition in favor of predominantly biological definitions of mental illness. Critics of this shift focus their attention on the social factors that have led psychiatrists to the prescription pad. One can only express wonderment at the discovery of so many new brain diseases since 1980. The bible of psychiatric diagnoses, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, has now been revised three times since 1953, most recently in 1994. The first two editions classified illnesses in accordance with the psychodynamic model prevalent at the time. Conditions warranting psychiatric treatment were understood as disorders of the mind. Then, in the 1980s, the language of psychotherapeutic disorder abruptly disappeared and was replaced by... 

It would be clinical folly to underestimate the importance of psychological and social factors in the manifestations of mental illnesses or to overlook psychological aspects of the conduct of biological therapies. 

Someday biological factors in mental illness will be treated in a manner analogous to the treatment of infectious diseases. For example, if a young man develops fever and weight loss, lives in slum housing, has a poor diet, and is often being exposed to people with respiratory diseases, he may develop a disease, characterized as pneumonia. He can then be treated immediately if the tubercle bacilli are found in his sputum. These could be considered biomarkers. 

Biochemical aspects of schizophrenia Discussion of plasma protein factors and serum factors. In Biological Treatment of Mental Illness, (Proceedings of the 11th International Conference of the Manfred Sakel Foundation), New York Academy of Medicine, Max Rinkel, ed., L. C. Page, New York, (1966), pp. 424-425. 

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