Abstract
Symptom relief is a commendable goal but no proof that a drug corrects anything. Aspirin can often relieve fever and pain, but it does not treat the causes. Medicines prescribed to treat organic diseases — such insulin for diabetes and digitalis for heart failure — have measurable effects that can and must be monitored. Hundreds of syndromes in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual only confuse any search for cure, but they give symptoms the appearance of ‘recognized medical disorders’. That allows the pharmaceutical industry to advertise psychoactive drugs — analgesics, stimulants, and sedatives — as if they were medicine. Psychoactive drugs are notoriously addictive, which tends to build life-time customers. That is unfortunate for the wide use of drugs, especially stimulants, may contribute to violence.
Highlights
This review presents an evolutionary approach to diagnosis that does three things. It offers an explanation of why psychiatric disorders seem to fall naturally into three categories, it suggests ways of resolving these problems, and it encourages a search for cures
In the early 20th century, Portuguese neurologist Antonio Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Moniz (1874-1955) tried cutting the nerve fibers that link the frontal lobes to the rest of the brain. Moniz claimed that this procedure, called lobotomy or frontal leucotomy, reduced the symptoms of madness, but he admitted that the operation often blunted the personality
Gage immediately convulsed but soon recovered consciousness and Electrical In 1928, Italian neurologist Ugo Cerletti (1877-1963), who had worked with Emil Kraepelin, was named Chair of the Department of Mental and Neurological Diseases at the University of Rome
Summary
This review presents an evolutionary approach to diagnosis that does three things. It offers an explanation of why psychiatric disorders seem to fall naturally into three categories (personality patterns, neuroses, and psychoses), it suggests ways of resolving these problems, and it encourages a search for cures.The management of functional (i.e., non-organic) disorders has always been — and is still limited to — the control of symptoms. Bleeding Bloodletting was the most popular treatment for madness for much longer than any of the subsequent of control methods listed below. Galen and the physicians who followed his methods for almost 2,000 years had a rational explanation for the usefulness of bleeding.
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