Biology Re-Emerges

The DSM-III did not dictate any particular cause of mental disorder. It classified each diagnosis through its symptoms, not by what factors led symptoms to emerge. Indeed, the manual’s theoretical neutrality was a key reason why the diverse factions within psychiatry and other mental health professions accepted it. The next transformation in views of mental illness involved yoking the DSM-III’s symptom-based diagnoses to the view that mental disorders were brain diseases produced by malfunctioning neurochemical systems and problematic genes. Since 1980, psychiatry has replaced the biopsychosocial model with a bio-bio-bio model that emphasizes brains, genes, and medications. A single-minded focus on psychopharmacology has supplanted the pluralist combination of psychotherapy, psychosocial interventions, and drug treatments that characterized the field during the postwar period. Over a short time period, the biological study of mental illness evolved from a marginal and discredited enterprise to become the dominant model in not just psychiatry but also popular culture.