Conceptual discord in psychiatry: origin, implications and failed attempts to resolve it.

Unlike other medical disciplines, psychiatry abounds in conceptual models. All of them are legitimate as there is no conclusive evidence that either is more proper than others in terms of its capacity to explicate the very nature of mental disorders and make possible more efficacious treatment of those with mental illness. There are two major sources of the existence of numerous models in psychiatry: difficulties in discerning the role played by the biological and the psychological in the genesis and treatment of individual mental disorders, and want of a widely accepted theory of the mind-body relationship. The conceptual divide in psychiatry has numerous negative effects: scarce communication or no communication between the advocates of different approaches; over-rating of the benefits of the concept one clings to; lack of interest in other approaches; confusion of clients when confronted with different explanation of the origin of their troubles and most appropriate treatment; tarnished image of psychiatry. There have been several attempts to correct conceptual cacophony in psychiatry. None of them proved successful.