“What goes on in our head is not separate from the rest of our physiology!”

LE FIGARO. – Is each psychiatric illness accompanied by biological factors?

P^r Marion Leboyer. – These are diseases like any other! All diseases have a clinical translation. In psychiatry, it is behavioral, but not only. For example, bipolar patients are twice as likely to develop metabolic syndrome, which predisposes to cardiovascular disease. A whole series of endocrine, immuno-inflammatory and cerebral disturbances explain the triggering of psychiatric pathologies.

Read alsoBipolar disorder: the hope of a blood screening at the general practitioner

However, this idea of ​​illness that would be “in the head” persists…

It is a false representation, probably inherited from Descartes, to consider that what happens in our head would be separated from the rest of physiology. We are one individual. What happens in our brain may, for example, reflect interactions with the gut. We also know that many mental illnesses are triggered by the interaction of factors…