This post is by Dr Şerife Tekin, Assistant Professor of Philosophy; Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Daemen College, and Associate Fellow; Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, and Dr Jeffrey Poland, Visiting Professor; Science and Technology Studies; Brown University, and Senior Lecturer; History, Philosophy and Social Science; Rhode Island School of Design.
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to provide some information about our book, Extraordinary Science and Psychiatry: Responses to the Crisis in Mental Health Research, published with the MIT Press in January 2017. We hope to introduce some of the main themes for the book here, and encourage the readers of the blog to join this important conversation on the philosophy and science of psychiatry.
As evident from the intriguing posts featured in the Imperfect Cognitions blog, the last decade has been a very exciting time to be doing philosophy of psychiatry. With the recent developments in psychiatric science, philosophers have many opportunities to ask fundamental questions and contribute to scientific change.
The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) was published in 2013, closely followed by the National Institute of Mental Health’s (NIMH) declaration of the DSM-5 as unfit for use in psychiatric research and its subsequent initiation of the Research Domain Criteria Initiative (RDoC) to spearhead such research. In addition, there are many research programs in psychiatry whose theoretical frameworks and methodologies transcend the boundaries of the traditional DSM-led research programs, including various types of research in neuroscience and genetics. Accompanying these research developments are first-person accounts from clinical circles: those affected by mental illness are narrating their experience of mental disorder and psychiatric treatment, while clinicians are speaking of the limitations of conventional psychiatric research and treatment.