The Royal College of Psychiatrists’ coat of arms – featuring the serpent-entwined Staff of Asclepius, the Greek God of medicine and healing – also bears the College motto, ‘Let Wisdom Guide’.
Wisdom is often personified as a female figure – Sophia (Greek) or Hokmah (Hebrew) – a figure that is the source of practical knowledge and a moral compass, emphasising ethical conduct and thoughtful living.
And indeed it is wisdom we need to understand the complexities of life – particularly when it intersects with mental illness, as it often does in psychiatry.
Our new series of podcasts, Big Questions in Psychiatry, explores the complex and sometimes messy issues shaping psychiatry. With the help of world experts in the field and utilising a grounding panel of patients, carers, clinicians, learners and service managers, we ask about:
- the philosophical notion of responsibility and its relation to blame in mental illness
- phenomenology in psychiatry – how do we, either as patients or as clinicians, know what is real and what is not, for example when dealing with hallucinations
- the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in psychiatry – is AI friend or foe?
Learning objectives
By the end of this podcast, you should be able to:
- explain the difference between phenomenology and psychopathology
- consider what abnormal perceptions could tell us about the nature of reality
- discuss the nuances of defining delusions in the context of different cultural beliefs.
Availability
This podcast is available as part of a CPD eLearning subscription.
If you want to listen to podcasts on the go, audio files can be accessed for FREE on SoundCloud, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. To earn a certificate for these, you will need to come back here and open the podcast to complete the reflective activity.
