Neuropsychiatrist

For the journal, see Neuropsychiatry (journal)

Neuropsychiatry is a branch of medicine that deals with mental disorders attributable to diseases of the nervous system. It preceded the current disciplines of psychiatry and neurology, which had common training. However, psychiatry and neurology subsequently split apart and are typically practiced separately. Nevertheless, neuropsychiatry has become a growing subspecialty of psychiatry and it is also closely related to the fields of neuropsychology and behavioral neurology, which is a subspecialty of neurology that addresses clinical problems of cognition and/or behavior caused by brain injury or brain disease of different etiologies.

Given the considerable overlap between these subspecialities, there has been a resurgence of interest and debate relating to neuropsychiatry in academia over the last decade. Most of this work argues for a rapprochement of neurology and psychiatry, forming a specialty above and beyond a subspecialty of psychiatry. For example, Professor Joseph B. Martin, former Dean of Harvard Medical School and a neurologist by training, has summarized the argument for reunion: "the separation of the two categories is arbitrary, often influenced by beliefs rather than proven scientific observations. And the fact that the brain and mind are one makes the separation artificial anyway." These points and some of the other major arguments are detailed below.

Neurologists have focused objectively on organic nervous system pathology, especially of the brain, whereas psychiatrists have laid claim to illnesses of the mind. This distinction between brain and mind as two different entities has characterized many of the differences between the two specialties. However, it is argued that this division is fictional; a plethora of evidence from the last century of research has shown that our mental life has its roots in the brain. Brain and mind are argued not to be discrete entities but just different ways of looking at the same system (Marr, 1982). It has been argued that embracing this mind/brain monism is important for several reasons. First, rejecting dualism logically implies that all mentation is biological and so immediately there is a common research framework in which understanding—and thus treatment—of mental suffering can be advanced. Second, it removes the widespread confusion about the legitimacy of mental illness: all disorders should have a footprint in the brain-mind system.

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