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News release from Dr
Niall McLaren
Attention: Editor 26/7/08 psych 1
Doctor calls for reform
of psychiatric practices
Australian psychiatrist Niall McLaren is calling for his profession to
change its "theory of mind" to stop doctors from misdiagnosing
patients and oversubscribing drugs.
Dr McLaren says that many psychiatrists have adopted a
"pseudoscientific biopsychosocial" theory which often leads
them to misdiagnose adults and children and prescribe inappropriate
drugs with debilitating side effects.
He has written and published a book to explain his own "biocognitive"
theory of mind as an alternative and has presented this theory to
academic audiences in the United States.
His book titled "Humanizing Madness: Psychiatry and the Cognitive
Neurosciences" was first published in 2007.
This year he has lectured on his theory at Florida State University,
Duke University in North Carolina, University of Michigan, and Wayne
State University in Michigan.
He also talked with staff of the National Institute of Health in
Washington, DC.
Dr McLaren is a psychiatrist in Darwin, Northern Territory.
He was head of the department of psychiatry at the Repatriation Hospital
in Perth for five years before becoming the regional psychiatrist for
the Kimberley Health Region from 1987 to 1993.
Dr McLaren says that his unconventional views over the years have placed
him at odds with the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of
Psychiatrists (RANZCP), which is the governing body of psychiatrists in
the two countries.
He says, "Most psychiatrists accept that mental disease just is
brain disease, that mental symptoms are nothing more than brain
illnesses manifest in a particular way.
"Consequently, they think the proper way of relieving these
peculiar symptoms is to correct an underlying disturbance of brain
function using physical treatments such as drugs, electro-convulsive
therapy (ECT) or even brain surgery.
"Thus a depressed person who sees a psychiatrist will almost
certainly be told: 'You have a chemical imbalance of the brain, and
these antidepressant tablets will cure you.'
He says, "If the depression does not get better, the patient may
well be admitted to hospital for a course of ECT.
"It seems all very rational but it is all very wrong.
"This type of biological psychiatry should be but a small part of a
larger treatment program in which human mentality takes priority,"
he says.
The College of Psychiatrists in Australia has endorsed what they call
the biopsychosocial model, an integrated understanding of the
biological, psychological and social aspects of mental health problems.
"They adopted this model after the collapse of the classic models
of psychoanalysis, biologism and behaviorism," he says.
Dr McLaren says, "Most Australasian psychiatrists accept the
biopsychosocial model as the central intellectual element in their
field, or as a definition of the discipline itself.
"Historically, the model derives from a series of papers written by
the American psychiatrist George Engel, starting in 1960.
"It is a matter of public fact that, while George Engel outlined a
place for a new model and even devised a name for it, he never wrote it.
That is to say it is false to state that there exists any model, theory,
approach, intellectual context or frame which could meaningfully be
called biopsychosocial.
"There is nothing in Engel's papers which in any way qualifies as a
scientific model, theory, plan, exposition or anything of the
sort."
Dr McLaren says, "This means that the work the college accepts as
the theoretical basis for our existence as a separate specialty of
medicine is illusory.
"After reviewing in my book the main theories used in modern
psychiatry," he says, "I conclude that eclectic psychiatry is
a pseudoscientific myth.
Dr McLaren says, "My biocognitive model is totally different. It
states that the mind has two irreducibly mental components, cognition
and conscious experience, which together account for the whole of mental
life.
"It allows us to rely on known principles of physically based data
processing in accounting for the ability of the mind to make the near
infinite decisions on which daily life is based," he says.
"The biocognitive model is diametrically opposed to the biological
approach that has gained the ascendancy in psychiatry over the past 25
years.
"Biocognition is wholly and irreducibly a mentalist account of
human behavior, yet it is firmly based in the physical structure of the
brain," he says.
"Unlike previous psychological theories, it takes account of the
structurally defined limits of the central nervous system.
"It leads to an integrative model of mental function and
dysfunction that can satisfy psychiatry's current intellectual
vacuum."
The biocognitive model is explained in detail in "Humanizing
Madness" (ISBN 1-932690-39-5) by Niall McLaren, MD, published by
Future Psychiatry Press and distributed by Baker & Taylor, Ingram
Book Group. This
book is available on the internet at
http://lovinghealing.com/humanizing-madness
.
Illustrative cases and other clinical material can be viewed at
www.futurepsychiatry.com .
Dr McLaren says, "The application of this biocognitive model to
practical psychiatry requires some reorientation of the current model.
"As a general theory of psychiatry, this new model restores the
essence of humanity, our mentalism, to its rightful primacy," he
says. "It can provide psychiatrists more scope to diagnose beyond
the limitations of often unsound biological theories and to offer
therapies not so dependent on drugs with debilitating side
effects."
#end
Photo of Dr Niall McLaren for web or print reproduction at http://www.wbpublicity.com.au/nm/booknm.htm
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Media contact: Dr Niall (Jock) McLaren - phone 61 08 89 455 399, fax 61
08 89 455 866, email jockmcl@octa4.net.au ; or publicist Wal Baker,
phone 61 02 94167111, email wal@wb-pr.com .
Dr Niall McLaren
Consultant psychiatrist
Provider No. 0202977F
NORTHERN PSYCHIATRIC SERVICES Pty Ltd, ACN 077 835 557 PO Box 282,
Sanderson, NT, Australia, 0813.
Phone: (08) 89 455 399 Fax: (08) 89 455 866
Email: jockmcl@octa4.net.au Web: www.futurepsychiatry.com
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