Grant: Catalyst Grant: Ethics

Although the contemporary era has been seen tremendous advances in medical technology, psychiatrists do not have sophisticated blood tests and scans to diagnosis problems as do doctors in other areas of medicine. As a consequence, there has been a longstanding debate about whether psychiatric diagnoses are really objective, or whether they just reflect the opinions of the time. Over the last twenty years, psychiatrists have been taught to base their practice on research studies, rather than on what they learn from their clinical experience or from patients during individual appointments. Basing practice on research studies seems more scientific, and psychiatrists have come to regard this new approach as reassurance that psychiatry is just as objective as any other area of medicine. Research studies do contribute one kind of knowledge to practice, but they do not tell us everything we need to know in order to practice psychiatry well. As a result, practitioners are left with many unanswered questions about what to do with knowledge they obtain from sources other than research studies. For example, complicated interactions might occur between patient and doctor in a session that give insights into the diagnosis. Is it ethical to take into consideration these insights? If so, under what circumstances? Is it ethical to practice only on the basis of research studies? Our research project addresses exactly these questions. We will investigate what kinds of knowledge should be used as the basis of psychiatric practice and, in particular, the determination of psychiatric diagnosis. Our project is vitally important to ensure that both practitioners and patients are aware of the strengths and weaknesses in the knowledge that lies behind psychiatric diagnoses. The results of this project will help to establish what kind of knowledge is needed for scientific and ethical psychiatric diagnoses.