A nod to a ‘psychiatry great’

In his recent editorial, “Is there only 1 neurobiologic psychiatric disorder, with different clinical expressions?” (Current Psychiatry. 2015;14(7):10-12 [http://bit.ly/1INCvxw]), Dr. Nasrallah presents convinc­ing evidence for such a conclusion. However, he did not mention that a somewhat similar concept was established by one of psychiatry’s greats, Karl Menninger, MD, more than 50 years ago. I’m referring to Menninger’s unitary concept of men­tal illness, espoused in his book, The Vital Balance.¹ Dr. Menninger was, of course, founder of the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, which now thrives in Houston, Texas, at Baylor College of Medicine. Like Freud, who predicted that advances in viewing the brain will someday help us understand it better than he could at the time, Dr. Menninger perhaps was ahead of his time in his perspec­tive on mental illness.

We should appreciate Dr. Nasrallah for putting together the research that provides an updated, somewhat revised view of Dr. Menninger’s theory.