Dr Robert Harland

December 2015

This seminar presented the paper and ideas from the Maudsley Attitudes Study, and opened discussion of work the Maudsley Philosophy Group might take forward.

The underlying paper, A study of psychiatrists’ concepts of mental illness (Harland, Antonova, Owen, Broome, Landau, Deeley & Murray), used a questionnaire with trainee psychiatrists at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust to assess attitudes across eight models of mental illness and four psychiatric disorders.

No single model was endorsed by all respondents; endorsement varied by disorder, with attitudes to schizophrenia expressed with the greatest conviction. Overall, the biological model was the most strongly endorsed. Principal components analysis suggested psychiatrists, as a group, organise their attitudes around a biological/non-biological contrast, an ‘eclectic’ combination of models, and a psychodynamic/sociological contrast.