ABSTRACT
Let’s move over to the Mental Health Section. GPs are always interested in the mind because patients’ personalities are so much in evidence in our surgeries. We are often told that an amazingly high proportion of our consultations are about people’s mental health problems. Some of the experts tell us that we continually fail to diagnose ‘depression.’ It is suggested that depressed patients deceive us by presenting their depressive illness under the guise of physical symptoms. We need to teach them how to convert their bodily symptoms back into emotions, so that we can give them antidepressants. And while we are trying to digest all this, along comes Professor McWhinney to remind us that the mind and the body are all one. This is confusing, so obviously we will be in need of some good books about the science and medicine of mind. To which I will add a pinch of philosophy.
