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Keynote Lecture 4

Bridging the Gap: Parity of Esteem between Mental and General Health in Both
Genders

Van der Gaag, Rutger Jan MD PhD Hon.FRCPsych

Professor of Psychiatry (Child & Adolescent) Radboudumc Nijmegen the Netherlands President of the Royal Dutch
Medical Association (KNMG)

In all countries worldwide mental health is less funded than general so called “general health”,
whereas mental conditions are as prevalent, if not more prevalent, than somatic diseases. Ever since
Descartes decreed that mind and body are two separate entities, mankind has the irrational conviction
that somatic conditions are “real” and mental conditions, if no ‘self organized’ misery, merely for
softies and vulnerable individuals. This on withstanding the evidence that mental disorders occur in
the same nature-nurture misbalance as any somatic condition and affect individuals regardless their
genetic of social vulnerability providing that the conditions are stressful enough. Mental disorders
stem from brain abnormalities if not structural in any case functional. Moreover women and men
react in a different way to environmental stress: whereas men react with ‘real’ illnesses as
hypertension, diabetes etc. whereas women react with ‘imagined’ disorders as anxiety disorder and
depression.

In this presentation the concept of differentiation between body and soul will be challenged
and evidence for parity addressed. Provocatively the presenter will put forward the question in how
far do mental health professionals contribute to the segregation between mental and physical
healthcare and what can they do to help resolve the problem.