Saturday, Oct. 21
10:45 – 11:45 (1 hr)
Meeting Room: Port McNeill (4th floor – North Tower)
Joseph Burley*, M.D; Casimiro Cabrera Abreu, M.D.

CanMEDS Roles:

1. Communicator
2. Medical Expert
3. Collaborator

At the end of this session, participants will be able to: 1) Discuss evidence related to the question, “Are mental disorders brain disorders?”; 2) Understand and be able to discuss the difference, similarities, and relation between brain and mind; and 3) Understand a working model of the mind, which applies to clinical practice.

There is no doubt the brain is necessary for the emergence of consciousness and mental disorders. Over the last two decades there have been recurring calls to classify mental disorders as brain disorders, based on the theory that all mental disorders originate from neurobiological pathology. There have been significant advances in understanding the brain, its anatomy, neurobiology, and pathology; however, few of our presently classified mental disorders it is theorized that with further research we will eventually be able to make the correlation. It is possible that the problem lies with our diagnostic classification system?
The question that remains is “is understanding the brain enough to understand and get to the root causes and most effective treatments of mental disorders?
Is it possible that other factors are required to answer this question? Is it possible that the brain and mind are not the same phenomena?
This workshop will briefly present pro and con arguments for these questions as a platform to generate discussion. It is hoped that the discussion amongst participants will generate ideas and concepts relevant to clinical practice and psychiatric research and questions of diagnostic classification.

W27a – Are Mental Disorders Brain Disorders
Casimiro Cabrera Abreu, M.D.

At the end of this session, participants will be able to: discuss the evidence related to the question “are mental disorders brain disorders” understand and be able to discuss the difference, similarities and relationship between brain and mind understand a working model of the mind which applies to clinical practice

There is no doubt that the brain is necessary for the emergence of consciousness and mental disorders. Over the last two decades there have been recurring calls to classify mental disorders as brain disorders based on the theory that all mental disorders originate from neurobiological pathology. In the past decades there have been significant advances in understanding the brain, its anatomy, neurobiology and pathology. However few of our presently classified mental disorders it is theorized that with further research we will eventually be able to make the correlation. It is possible that the problem lies with our diagnostic classification system.
The question that remains is “is understanding the brain enough to understand and get to the root causes and most effective treatments of mental disorders?
Is it possible that other factors are required to answer this question? Is it possible that the brain and mind are not the same phenomena?
This workshop will briefly present pro and con arguments for these questions as a platform to generate discussion. It is hoped that the discussion amongst participants will generate ideas and concepts relevant to clinical practice and psychiatric research and questions of diagnostic classification.

References:

1. The Interpersonal Neurobiology of Intersubjectivity Shore A. Frontiers in Psychology April 2020
2. Varela A. Thompson E. Rosche E. The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience Revised Edition Penguin Randomhouse 2017