Psychiatry / Neurology

I've heard some people say that they think that psychiatric disorders are neurological disorders really. As our understanding of neurology increases psychiatric disorders will be revealed to be neurological disorders and so ultimately the distinction between psychiatry and neurology cannot be maintained.

People who attempt to hold onto the distinction sometimes say that psychiatric disorders are disorders of cognitive processes whereas neurological disorders are non-cognitive disorders of neural processes. Cortical blindness is a disorder of a paradigmatically cognitive process (vision), however, yet most peoples intuitions are that cortical blindness is neurological rather than psychiatric.

In the other direction the essential feature of Tourette's is tics where tics are a motor disturbance. Tourette's is considered to be psychiatric rather than neurological, however. One could attempt to characterise psychiatric disorders as disorders of volition (the will) but then the trouble is that lesion to the motor cortex can result in paralysis yet this is regarded as neurological rather than psychiatric.

What do people think?

Will the distinction between neurological and psychiatric disorders break down as our knowledge advances or are there grounds for a principled distinction?

I'm not sure...

Hi Alexandra,

I don't really have an answer for you, but can tell you my personal experience.

I had a severe brain injury in January. The capable person that I normally am all but disappeared. My nuerologist helped me with medications for the pain, but told me I would have to wait for the swelling to go down and healing to begin. He said the brain is so sensitive to any jar or hurt can cause horrible damage and mine had been more than jarred.

I kept having night terrors about the incident that caused me to have the brain injury. He gave me elavil for the night terrors. It has helped a lot.

Recently I tripped, not once but twice and jarred my head again. It, along with almost unbearable stress, has caused me to have a relapse. He increased the elavil and I can see a difference. I'm not up to where I was, but I am doing some better. The nuerologist said I will get back to my former state of recovery and told me not to panic over the set back. Of course telling a person with Panic Disorder not to panic is like telling a monkey not to like banannas. It's not going to happen.

I have learned that in the case of brain injury, I need my nuerologist and pdoc. Without them both, I would have never made it this far in my recovery.

I hope this helps you in your search.

Take care,

Jan

You might get more information by posting at Neurotalk, they have all sorts of these types of discussions there.

Thanks to you both for your responses.

I'm not looking for information. I'm more interested in what people think about this if they are interested in thinking / writing about it...