Barter Street
London
What is mental health? Can we make sense of psychosis? What’s the connection between mental health and concepts including race & evolution? Explore these questions, among others, through the lens of philosophy at the 2023/4 London Lectures.
The person in psychiatry: an ecohumanist, enactive approach
Many people suffer from psychiatric disorders and mental distress. But how are we to understand these problems, and how are we to treat them? I argue that we need to look at their developmental history, the social and cultural practices they take part in, and their existential (self)understanding. Surprisingly perhaps, a focus on the person in psychiatry reveals the need to take people’s context – broadly understood – into account. This fits with holistic, personalized approaches to treatment. It also implies that psychiatry may need to become more socially and/or politically engaged.
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About the speaker
Sanneke de Haan is Socrates Professor of Psychiatry and Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam and Assistant Professor Clinical Bioethics at the Ethics Institute of Utrecht University. She works on topics at the intersection of philosophy and psychiatry. Her current research project focusses on so-called self-illness ambiguity for patients with recurrent depressions, and the development of a notion of relational authenticity. Her book on Enactive Psychiatry was published in 2020 by Cambridge University Press.