Abstracts Accepted

Neuroscience and Values: a case study illustrating developments in policy, training and research in the UK and internationally

Prof KWM (Bill) Fulford*

Abstract

In the current climate of dramatic advances in the neurosciences, it has been widely assumed that the diagnosis of mental disorder is a matter exclusively for value-free science.  Using a detailed case history, this presentation will show how, to the contrary, values come into the diagnosis of mental disorders directly through the criteria at the heart of psychiatry’s most scientifically–grounded classification, the American Psychiatric Associations DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual).  Various possible interpretations of the importance of values in psychiatric diagnosis will be outlined.  Drawing on work in the Oxford analytic tradition of philosophy, it will be shown that, properly understood, diagnostic values in psychiatry are complementary to good science.  This interpretation opens up psychiatric diagnostic assessment to the resources of a new skills-based approach to working with complex and conflicting values (also derived from philosophy) called “values-based practice”.  Developments in values based practice in policy, training and research in the UK, and internationally, will be outlined. 
The paper will conclude with an indication of how these developments in values based practice complement evidence-based practice in an approach to diagnostic assessment that is both science-based and person-centred.

Key Words: Mental disorder; Value-free science; Values-based practice

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*Professor of Philosophy and Mental Health, University of Warwick and Member of the Philosophy Faculty, Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist, and Fellow of St Cross College, University of Oxford, United Kingdom.
Room A-133 Medical School, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, England
United Kingdom
Email: pwwf@norcam.demon.co.uk