VDM Sin Jessica: Psychiatry, Realism, and Science

The legitimacy of psychiatry as a medical discipline is often challenged. Anti-psychiatric arguments fall broadly into two categories: the metaphysical and the epistemological. Critics of psychiatry frequently appeal to one or more of these arguments to discredit the field and to subvert the social power that psychiatrists and mental health workers use to control of the behaviour of people who are allegedly mentally ill. If these arguments had or gained traction, there would be reason to be suspicious of the practice of psychiatry and to be hesitant to invest increasingly scarce resources into the research programs in mental health. In this work, I show that psychiatry can be defended against major lines of anti-psychiatric thought. I do so by exploring what it means for an illness to be "real", what it means for a field to be scientific or objective, and what it means for a condition to be a disorder. This work will be of interest to all whose interests span psychiatry, health, illness, medicine, and science.