Neeta Mehta recently advanced the thesis that medical practice is facing a crisis today. In her paper “Mind-body dualism: a critique from a health perspective” she attributes the crisis to the philosophy of Descartes and set out to understand why this dualism is still alive despite its disavowal from philosophers, health practitioners and lay people. The aim of my reply to her critique is three-fold. First, I draw attention to a more fundamental problem and show that dualism is inescapable—scientifically and commonsensically. I then focus on the self-conscious emotions of shame, guilt and remorse, and argue that the self is not identical with a brain. The third section draws attention to the crisis in psychiatry and stipulates some of the main reasons why this is so. Contrary to Mehta's thesis, the health profession faces a crisis because of physicalism and biological reductionism.

The mission of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health is to transform understanding and treatment of mental disorders. According to its former director, Dr. Thomas Insel, fundamental to its mission is the proposition that “mental illnesses are brain disorders.” The aim of this article is to examine this proposition and to argue that it does not make sense. As a scientific proposition, it is based on contentious empirical claims, and as a metaphysical proposition, it is consistent with those who claim that a person is a brain. A conceptual analysis is employed as a tool to show that it is a category mistake to ascribe psychological properties of a person to a brain. The article concludes with a brief indication of the ethical implications of Insel’s proposition for mental health care.