Doctor of The Future

[PhoenixDown]

"i think we have to change the phrase "mental illness" to something more benign as it has a pejorative connotation a bit like saying a person with the common cold has a "contagion" or a "contagious disease".
Why not call depression a "serotonin deficiency syndrome" or something a bit more accurate and less emotive. Why is mental illness such as rag-bag of pseudoscience which still carries baggage from the Middle Ages like calling someone a witch.
Psychiatry is still that vast inland sea of undiscovered organic disease whose manifestations are largely descriptive and behavioural. We don't call diabetics potentially mental fainting illness or hyperparathyroidism "flank pain and central abdominal pain illness with lots of wee wee".
Major depression is not contrasted with Minor Depression and Anxiety becomes a disease rather than a manifestation of something biochemical. DSM IV is a garbage bag of pseudoscience reminiscent of medicine in the time of Molière.
I hope in a century psychiatry will finally catch up with internal medicine and neurology. I am anxiously waiting for this as the current mess is depressing. Indeed I can feel a panic attack coming on now.
Odysseus"

This is taken from the British Medical Journal's international Doc2Doc forum.
http://doc2doc.bmj.com/forums/open-clinical_general-clinical_mental-health-problem