ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the evidence for supposing that a more orthodox medical approach can be practically useful. It focuses on the most severe and chronic of the functional psychiatric disorders, schizophrenia. The chapter describes the principles underlying the conventional classification and considers the status of the common affective disorders as illnesses. It then focuses on personality disorders, hysteria, and the lesser psychiatric syndromes which, for want of a better term, can be grouped together under the heading of 'mental ill-health'. The classification of the psychiatric disorders is hierarchical throughout; that is, the syndromes are ordered into a hierarchy according to their importance for diagnosis. The affective disorders are so called because the primary clinical abnormality is an exaggeration of the normal moods of depression and elation. One of the best modern epidemiological studies of suicide was carried out in London by Peter Sainsbury, who derived many of his ideas from Emile Durkheim.
