There are minds and there are bodies. On this basic division of the human state the world largely agrees, with fundamental consequences for the treatment of physical and mental health, regarded as two distinct branches of medicine.

 

But what if this essential mind/body split was false at source – an unhelpful illusion? What if thinking about mental health in these terms was doing nobody any favours, least of all the patient?

 

Tracing the history of what is probably the ultimate disorder of the divided mind, schizophrenia, and retracing his own steps through the changing science of clinical psychiatry, Professor Edward Bullmore sets out to explore ‘the original schism’ and its far-reaching effects. After decades of polarised thinking about how to treat schizophrenia – either as a condition that is ‘all in the mind’ or as a physical disease of the brain–west and at an epochal moment. Thanks largely to the growing power of big data and open science, psychiatrists have unprecedented insights into the workings of human brain. At last we know the “genes for schizophrenia”, but we also know far more about how these genes interact with our environment and can be triggered by life experiences, from trauma to self-abuse.

 

We now have a chance to escape the dark and divided history of schizophrenia if we are prepared to allow the new and future science to disrupt its habitual bias to split body and mind, and go in search of a new, integrated position on the mind’s ailments and their possible cures.