‘Depression by any other name...’

摘要

There is a popular conviction that psychological disturbance is invariably a reaction to environmental events. This approach is associated with total rejection of the so-called ‘medical model’. However, allowance must be made for the fact that contemporary knowledge of psychiatric illness is well behind what is now known about general medicine, and current ideas about psychiatric aetiology may be emotionally determined to give satisfying concepts which are often almost impossible to refute.