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Volume 195 - August 2009

Contents

Page 11 of 13

Columns

  • From the Editor's desk

  • Peter Tyrer
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    02 January 2018, p. 470
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  • Classification in the dock

    ‘Dr Nosology, you are charged with bringing the science of classification into disrepute in your handling of psychiatric disorders. Specifically, you have developed a set of spurious categories that have no independent standing and which have led to confusion, doubt and error. How do you plead?’ It would take a tough-minded psychiatrist with a capacity for psychopathic dissociation to plead anything but ‘guilty as charged’ to this accusation, and we have admitted as much in our pages many times recently. This is sad, as diagnosis is intended to be one of the strongest assets of the psychiatrist. I have worked in many multidisciplinary psychiatric settings over the years and in some the hierarchy of management had become almost as flat as a pancake, but even in these the exercise of diagnosis was regarded as a skill that was the special province of the psychiatrist. So now is it really a false prospectus, exercised by an interpreter who pretends to be fluent in languages but in practice picks up only the odd word? Not yet, but in this issue Frances (pp. 391–392) reminds us that psychiatry is still only on the margins of diagnostic credibility. In the UK the initial part of medical training is called the first MB and so it is entirely appropriate that our bottom-line starter is by an author of the same title (First, pp. 382–390). This includes the worrying statistic that 21% of current diagnoses in the ICD and DSM classifications have conceptual differences, but as Jablensky (pp. 379–381) points out it would be quite bizarre if there was good agreement – it would almost represent scientific fraud. The search for validity as a long-term goal may seem to be a mirage, but at least we should try for clinical utility.

Book Reviews

Columns

Book Review

Book Reviews

Columns

Front matter

  • BJP volume 195 issue 5 Cover and Front matter

  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    02 January 2018, pp. f2-f3
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Book Review

Book Reviews

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Other

  • Contents of Advances in Psychiatric Treatment

  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    27 April 2018, p. 560
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  • Contents of Advances in Psychiatric Treatment

  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    13 June 2018, p. 186
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Book Reviews

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Other

  • Contents of the American Journal of Psychiatry

  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    13 June 2018, p. 187
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  • Contents of the American Journal of Psychiatry

  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    27 April 2018, p. 561
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Book Reviews

Columns

Page 11 of 13