Philosophical perspectives on the causes of mental illness

Oxford University
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The Oxford Loebel Lectures and Research Programme (OLLRP) were established in 2013 with the generous support of J. Pierre Loebel, Clinical Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington, and Felice Loebel. The purpose of OLLRP is to address the shortcomings of a unilinear approach to mental illness that arise from focusing uniquely on biological, psychological or social factors. OLLRP will work towards delineating the nature and magnitude of biopsychosocial interactions in the causation, evaluation and management of mental states, normal and abnormal, going beyond a simple checklist of contributing factors to arrive at an understanding of how the interactions between factors affect one other and configure the whole. Through a series of six Loebel Lectures held over three years, excellent research, and clinical impact, we aim to present and review the best evidence of causal interaction between biopsychosocial factors, philosophically analyse the conceptual relationships between them, and lay the ground work for a unified theoretical basis for psychiatric practice.

  1. 08/23/2017

    2015 Welcome & Loebel Lecture in Neuroethics: Death and the self

    This lecture investigates changing attitudes and beliefs about the persistence of the self. Many revolutionary positions in philosophy – skepticism, materialism, hard determinism – have disturbing implications. By contrast, the revolutionary idea that there is no persisting self is supposed to have generally beneficial consequences. Insofar as the self does not persist, one should be more generous to others, less punitive, and have less fear of death. This talk will report recent experiments indicating that changing beliefs about the persistence of self does affect generosity and punitiveness. For attitudes about the self and death, we examined responses from Hindus, Tibetan Buddhists and Westerners; the results are complex and surprising.

    46 min

  2. 08/23/2017

    2015 Loebel Lecture 1: Neurobiological materialism collides with the experience of being human

    The first of three public lectures which took place in Oxford in November 2015. Series title: The theoretical challenge of modern psychiatry: no easy cure The 2015 Loebel Lectures in Psychiatry and Philosophy were delivered by Professor Steven E. Hyman, director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard as well as Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology.

    52 min

  3. 08/23/2017

    2015 Loebel Lecture 2: Science is quietly, inexorably eroding many core assumptions underlying psychiatry

    The second of three public lectures which took place in Oxford in November 2015. Series title: The theoretical challenge of modern psychiatry: no easy cure The 2015 Loebel Lectures in Psychiatry and Philosophy were delivered by Professor Steven E. Hyman, director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard as well as Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology.

    1h 2m

  4. 08/23/2017

    2015 Loebel Lecture 3: What is the upshot?

    The last of three public lectures which took place in Oxford in November 2015. Series title: The theoretical challenge of modern psychiatry: no easy cure The 2015 Loebel Lectures in Psychiatry and Philosophy were delivered by Professor Steven E. Hyman, director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard as well as Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology.

    59 min

  5. 08/23/2017

    2016 Loebel Lecture 1: Developmental risk and resilience: The challenge of translating multi-level data to concrete interventions

    Professor Essi Viding delivers the first of two talks in the 2016 Loebel Lectures in Psychiatry and Philosophy series In these Loebel lectures Prof Essi Viding will use disruptive behaviour disorders as an illustrative example to introduce the challenges we face when we try to understand development of psychopathological outcomes. We classify disorders at the level of behaviour, yet individuals arrive at the same behavioural outcomes via multiple different developmental trajectories; a phenomenon called equifinality in the developmental psychopathology literature. A related concept is heterogeneity; we can find individuals with markedly different aetiology to their disorder within the same diagnostic category. The current diagnostic categories identify clinically disturbed functioning, but they do not identify a homogeneous group of individuals. Getting better at individuating distinct pathways to a disordered outcome is only part of the challenge. Once risk factors for a specific developmental trajectory are identified, we still need to understand their modus operandi. There is no doubt that both biology and the social environment play a role in the emergence of psychopathology, but meaningfully studying their interplay is far from trivial. What are the key biological indicators of vulnerability and resilience? How can we isolate causal mechanisms? How do we model multiple social risk factors and their impact over development?

    50 min

  6. 08/23/2017

    2016 Loebel Lecture 2: Developmental risk and resilience: The challenge of translating multi-level data to concrete interventions

    Professor Essi Viding delivers the second of two talks in the 2016 Loebel Lectures in Psychiatry and Philosophy series In these Loebel lectures Prof Essi Viding will use disruptive behaviour disorders as an illustrative example to introduce the challenges we face when we try to understand development of psychopathological outcomes. We classify disorders at the level of behaviour, yet individuals arrive at the same behavioural outcomes via multiple different developmental trajectories; a phenomenon called equifinality in the developmental psychopathology literature. A related concept is heterogeneity; we can find individuals with markedly different aetiology to their disorder within the same diagnostic category. The current diagnostic categories identify clinically disturbed functioning, but they do not identify a homogeneous group of individuals. Getting better at individuating distinct pathways to a disordered outcome is only part of the challenge. Once risk factors for a specific developmental trajectory are identified, we still need to understand their modus operandi. There is no doubt that both biology and the social environment play a role in the emergence of psychopathology, but meaningfully studying their interplay is far from trivial. What are the key biological indicators of vulnerability and resilience? How can we isolate causal mechanisms? How do we model multiple social risk factors and their impact over development?

    36 min

  7. 08/23/2017

    2016 Loebel Lectures one day Workshop: Eamon McCrory

    To complement Essi Viding's lectures, Developmental risk and resilience: The challenge of translating multi-level data to concrete interventions Eamon McCrory, Neuroscience, UCL

    29 min

  8. 08/23/2017

    2016 Loebel Lectures one day Workshop: Charlotte Cecil

    To complement Essi Viding's lectures, Developmental risk and resilience: The challenge of translating multi-level data to concrete interventions Dr Charlotte Cecil, Psychology, KCL

    25 min
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About

The Oxford Loebel Lectures and Research Programme (OLLRP) were established in 2013 with the generous support of J. Pierre Loebel, Clinical Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington, and Felice Loebel. The purpose of OLLRP is to address the shortcomings of a unilinear approach to mental illness that arise from focusing uniquely on biological, psychological or social factors. OLLRP will work towards delineating the nature and magnitude of biopsychosocial interactions in the causation, evaluation and management of mental states, normal and abnormal, going beyond a simple checklist of contributing factors to arrive at an understanding of how the interactions between factors affect one other and configure the whole. Through a series of six Loebel Lectures held over three years, excellent research, and clinical impact, we aim to present and review the best evidence of causal interaction between biopsychosocial factors, philosophically analyse the conceptual relationships between them, and lay the ground work for a unified theoretical basis for psychiatric practice.

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