Computational psychiatry

Computational ideas pervade many areas of science and have an integrative explanatory role in neuroscience and cognitive science. However, computational depictions of cognitive function have had surprisingly little impact on the way we assess mental illness because diseases of the mind have not been systematically conceptualized in computational terms. Here, we outline goals and nascent efforts in the new field of computational psychiatry, which seeks to characterize mental dysfunction in terms of aberrant computations over multiple scales. We highlight early efforts in this area that employ reinforcement learning and game theoretic frameworks to elucidate decision-making in health and disease. Looking forwards, we emphasize a need for theory development and large-scale computational phenotyping in human subjects.     

Saints and psychiatry

Summary The Irish Saint Dympna, a distant and misty figure, with her martyrdom inspired a millenary tradition of family and community care for the mentally ill at Geel, in Belgium. She is the Catholic patron of the mentally afflicted.The French Saint Vincent de Paul, a powerful leader, took care of the insane and the poor in gentle ways; worked for reforms in hospitals, education, delinquency, and penology; founded religious orders dedicated to the sick; and set in motion the hospitals of La Salpêtrière and Le Bicêtre.The portuguese-Spaniard Saint John of God, a humble shepherd, a marginal soldier, an ignorant construction worker, and a modest salesman of books, has had more relevance to psychiatry than has Dympna, the martyr, or Vincent de Paul, the social reformer. No other saint has had more practical and sustained influence on hospital psychiatry than he, and it is a mystery of sorts that his name still awaits the distinguished place of honor it so richly deserves.     

Critical phenomenology and psychiatry

Continental Philosophy Review - Whereas classical Critical Theory has tended to view phenomenology as inherently uncritical, the recent upsurge of what has become known as critical phenomenology...     

Gender and infant psychiatry

The practice of infant psychiatry raises theoretical and clinical issues for the feminist psychotherapist. The psychological and social development of infants, the mother-child relationship, and the role of fathers are all areas of shared concern for infant psychiatry and a feminist project. This paper argues that attention to gender as a fundamental category of analysis is crucial in order to understand the context of infant development, to develop a realistic theory of mothering that avoids both mother blaming and the idealization of mothers, and to illuminate the political content of our approaches to therapeutic intervention and research.     

Towards an anthropological psychiatry

The situation of present day psychiatry is described as being dominated by an empiricist perspective. The limitations of this perspective are analyzed and a rough sketch of the hermeneutical approach in psychiatry is offered. It is argued that a fully developed hermeneutical psychiatry implies a reference towards anthropological themes. Three of them, time, historicity and corporality, are investigated.     

对保乳手术及预防性乳腺切除术的思考

鉴于对乳腺癌是全身性疾病的认识,为提高术后生存质量,目前乳腺癌治疗中保乳手术日益受到重视.而为了阻断高危险性的乳腺向乳腺癌发展,预防性乳房切除术也正在被患者接受.保留乳腺与预防性切除乳腺的医学实践反映了目前人们对乳腺癌的深层认识,值得深入思考.