Neurological disorder or social phenomenon?

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William Lawson

University of Texas, USA

: J Spine Neurosurg

Abstract

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Advances in the neurosciences have begun to elucidate the neurobiological and pharmacological basis of schizophrenia and related disorders. Abnormalities in functional and structural imaging, pharmacological responsiveness and identification of some risk genes clearly show a neurobiological etiology. Yet these disorders are treated differently than other chronic neurological disorders. They are much more likely to get arrested, placed in the correctional system. Another consequence is that these individuals receive the less optimistic treatment and are disproportionally assumed to belong to racial and ethnic minorities. One proposal is to relabel these disorders to neurological disorder.

Biography

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William Lawson has worked as an Associate Dean for Health Disparities and as a Professor of Psychiatry at the Dell Medical School, University of Texas Austin. He was also the Professor of Psychology at Huston-Tillotson, the Director of Community Health Programs at the Sandra Joy Anderson Community Health and Wellness Center and also the Director of Health Disparities Policy and Research at Austin Travis County Integral Care. He has completed his PhD in Psychology from the University of New Hampshire and MD from the Pritzker School of Medicine University of Chicago. He pursued his Residency at Stanford University and a Fellowship at the National Institute of Mental Health. He held Faculty Positions at the University of Illinois, Urbana, University of California, Irvine, Vanderbilt University, University of Arkansas and Howard University. He has over 200 publications and is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the National Medical Association.

E-mail: wlawsonpsy@gmail.com