Common bases of psychical illnesses?

• Main Authors: Jure Bon, Sanja Šešok
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Slovenian Psychologists' Association 2004-08-01
• Series: Psihološka Obzorja
• Subjects: psychiatry; psychical illness; emotional disturbances; anxiety disturbances; neurological networks
• Online Access: http://psiholoska-obzorja.si/arhiv_clanki/2004_2/bon_sesok.pdf

Psychical illnesses are complex disturbances in the higher-order neural functions. However, medicine (and psychiatry in its framework) treated them as functionally homogeneously structure in the past, where the psychical functioning has been influenced mainly by changes in the balance between different chemical transmitters. Recently the advancement of neuroscience as well as some empirical evidence of some genetic studies substantionally change the understanding of psychical disturbances. In this article an attempt is being made to point out the importance of the syndromatic approach to study the psychical illness, using depression as an example. Recent knowledge is described on the existence of broader network for emotions processing ant its role in symptoms of different psychical disturbances, which are traditionally treated as similar or dissimilar to depressive syndrome. It seems reasonable to link the basic brain functioning to more abstract categories of human behaviour, e.g. recent research outcomes about the orbital core functioning, and to search the foundations of the illness symptoms within.