Date: 17 October 2011
Time: 6:30 - 7:30pm
Venue: MWT6, Meng Wah Complex, The University of Hong Kong

Validating Concepts of Mental Disorder:Precedents from the History of Science by Professor Robert Miller (Honorary Fellow, Department of Psychological Medicine, Otago University, Wellington)

Professor Miller is one of those few privileged scientists who have first-hand access to the topic he studies. As a young medical student at Oxford, Prof Miller was hit by psychosis and had to put his studies aside for a few years. While many would be deterred by this setback, Prof Miller turned this experience into an advantage, and started his career as a neuroscientist. His work since the 1970s has changed a lot of what we know about psychosis today, including the now widely-recognized role of dopamine in reward learning and psychotic symptoms.

In this lecture, Professor Miller offers a critique of scientific research in psychiatry, from the perspective of the natural philosophy tradition focusing on the interdependent relationship between empiricism and rationalism (experiment and theory), and the close link between provision of true explanations and secure validation of the basic concepts used in these explanations. A better way forwards is suggested for psychiatry to acquire a truly scientific status, with a more secure foundation for concepts of mental disorder and corresponding diagnoses.

The event is co-hosted by:
Centre for the Humanities and Medicine and the Department of Psychiatry