Psychiatric disorders as networks of interconnected harms

Understanding psychiatric disorders can involve examining how harm (distress and/or disability) arises from symptom interactions. In an original approach within the philosophy of psychiatry, we hypothesize that harm emerges from excessive relational strength between symptoms, misalignment between symptoms, and/or local instabilities of relationships, resulting in a state of pathological stability. To support these claims, in addition to the conceptual analysis developed, we anchor this work within a computational philosophy framework, recently developed in the philosophy of medicine, by utilizing theoretical simulations. We thus rely on the Ising model to demonstrate that the perceived global harm of a patient depends on three concepts derived from the Ising model, one of the most widely used models to date within the framework of symptom network theory: the Hamiltonian (strength of interactions), misalignment and temperature (propensity for instability), and free energy (overall stability). This framework highlights the role of inter-symptomatic dynamics in driving harm, offering potential insights for refining psychiatric diagnosis and adaptive treatments in psychiatric disorders.