Philosophical perspectives on the causes of mental illness

The Oxford Loebel Lectures and Research Programme (OLLRP) were established in 2013 with the generous support of J. Pierre Loebel, Clinical Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington, and Felice Loebel. The purpose of OLLRP is to address the shortcomings of a unilinear approach to mental illness that arise from focusing uniquely on biological, psychological or social factors. OLLRP will work towards delineating the nature and magnitude of biopsychosocial interactions in the causation, evaluation and management of mental states, normal and abnormal, going beyond a simple checklist of contributing factors to arrive at an understanding of how the interactions between factors affect one other and configure the whole. Through a series of six Loebel Lectures held over three years, excellent research, and clinical impact, we aim to present and review the best evidence of causal interaction between biopsychosocial factors, philosophically analyse the conceptual relationships between them, and lay the ground work for a unified theoretical basis for psychiatric practice.