Interventionist causal models in psychiatry: repositioning the mind–body problem
Abstract
Background: The diversity of research methods applied to psychiatric disorders results in a confusing plethora of causal claims. To help make sense of these claims, the interventionist model (IM) of causality has several attractive features. First, it connects causation with the practical interests of psychiatry, defining causation in terms of ‘what would happen under interventions’, a question of key interest to those of us whose interest is ultimately in intervening to prevent and treat illness. Second, it distinguishes between predictive-correlative and true causal relationships, an essential issue cutting across many areas in psychiatric research. Third, the IM is non-reductive and agnostic to issues of mind–body problem. Fourth, the IM model cleanly separates issues of causation from questions about the underlying mechanism. Clarifying causal influences can usefully structure the search for underlying mechanisms. Fifth, it provides a sorely needed conceptual rigor to multi-level modeling, thereby avoiding a return to uncritical holistic approaches that ‘everything is relevant’ to psychiatric illness. Sixth, the IM provides a clear way to judge both the generality and depth of explanations. In conclusion, the IM can provide a single, clear empirical framework for the evaluation of all causal claims of relevance to psychiatry and presents psychiatry with a method of avoiding the sterile metaphysical arguments about mind and brain which have preoccupied our field but yielded little of practical benefit.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
If the association between a risk factor and disease is causal, reducing risk factor exposure will reduce rates of disease; if the association is noncausal, altering risk factor exposure will not affect illness rates.
“As articulated by the counterfactual/interventionist theories of causation,13–15 if the association is causal, reducing risk factor exposure will reduce rates of disease. If the association is noncausal, altering risk factor exposure will not affect illness rates.”
From Dependent Stressful Life Events and Prior Depressive Episodes in the Prediction of Major Depression (2010) · cites this paper as [13]
Cites
Causal Relationship Between Stressful Life Events and the Onset of Major Depression
Kendler, K. S., Karkowski, L. M., & Prescott, C. A. (1999) · American Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.1176/ajp.156.6.837 · Cited by 2,486 · see citing works
Self-citation
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Sleep disturbance and psychiatric disorders
Freeman, D., Sheaves, B., Waite, F., Harvey, A. G., & Harrison, P. J. (2020) · The Lancet Psychiatry · doi:10.1016/s2215-0366(20)30136-x · Cited by 843 · see citing works
Freeman, D., Sheaves, B., Goodwin, G. M., Yu, L.-M., Nickless, A., Harrison, P. J., Emsley, R., Luik, A. I., Foster, R. G., Wadekar, V., et al. (2017) · The Lancet Psychiatry · doi:10.1016/s2215-0366(17)30328-0 · Cited by 652 · see citing works
Concomitants of paranoia in the general population
Freeman, D., McManus, S., Brugha, T., Meltzer, H., Jenkins, R., & Bebbington, P. (2011) · Psychological Medicine · doi:10.1017/s0033291710001546 · Cited by 294 · see citing works
Freeman, D., Dunn, G., Startup, H., Pugh, K., Cordwell, J., Mander, H., Černis, E., Wingham, G., Shirvell, K., & Kingdon, D. (2015) · The Lancet Psychiatry · doi:10.1016/s2215-0366(15)00039-5 · Cited by 295 · see citing works
Freeman, D., Waite, F., Startup, H., Myers, E., Lister, R., McInerney, J., Harvey, A. G., Geddes, J., Zaiwalla, Z., Luengo-Fernandez, R., et al. (2015) · The Lancet Psychiatry · doi:10.1016/s2215-0366(15)00314-4 · Cited by 219 · see citing works
Early smoking onset and risk for subsequent nicotine dependence: a monozygotic co-twin control study
Kendler, K. S., Myers, J., Damaj, M. I., & Chen, X. (2013) · American Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.2012.12030321 · Cited by 177 · see citing works
Self-citationDependent Stressful Life Events and Prior Depressive Episodes in the Prediction of Major Depression
Kendler, K. S., & Gardner, C. O. (2010) · Archives of General Psychiatry · doi:10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2010.136 · Cited by 156 · see citing works
“These variables (and, where available, the original scales and publications showing their association with MD) were (1) birth year, (2) mean parental warmth measured by the Parental Bonding Instrument,(33,34) (3) childhood sexual abuse,(35,36) (4) parental loss due to death or divorce in childhood,(37) (5) neuroticism…”
Self-citationMehl, S., Werner, D., & Lincoln, T. M. (2015) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01450 · Cited by 129 · see citing works
Freeman, D., Brugha, T., Meltzer, H., Jenkins, R., Stahl, D., & Bebbington, P. (2010) · Journal of Psychiatric Research · doi:10.1016/j.jpsychires.2010.03.018 · Cited by 99 · see citing works
Freeman, D., Thompson, C., Vorontsova, N., Dunn, G., Carter, L.-A., Garety, P., Kuipers, E., Slater, M., Antley, A., Glucksman, E., et al. (2013) · Psychological Medicine · doi:10.1017/s003329171300038x · Cited by 79 · see citing works
Explaining paranoia: cognitive and social processes in the occurrence of extreme mistrust
Freeman, D., & Loe, B. S. (2023) · BMJ Mental Health · doi:10.1136/bmjment-2023-300880 · Cited by 55 · see citing works
Childhood trauma and personality disorder criterion counts: A co-twin control analysis.
Berenz, E. C., Amstadter, A. B., Aggen, S. H., Knudsen, G. P., Reichborn-Kjennerud, T., Gardner, C. O., & Kendler, K. S. (2013) · Journal of Abnormal Psychology · doi:10.1037/a0034238 · Cited by 42 · see citing works
Self-citationOpoka, S. M., & Lincoln, T. M. (2017) · Psychiatric Clinics of North America · doi:10.1016/j.psc.2017.08.005 · Cited by 33 · see citing works
Scott, A. J., Rowse, G., & Webb, T. L. (2017) · PLOS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0186233 · Cited by 30 · see citing works
Reininghaus, U., Daemen, M., Postma, M. R., Schick, A., Hoes-van der Meulen, I., Volbragt, N., Nieman, D., Delespaul, P., de Haan, L., van der Pluijm, M., et al. (2024) · JAMA Psychiatry · doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2023.4590 · Cited by 28 · see citing works
Conceptualisation of severe and enduring anorexia nervosa: a qualitative meta-synthesis
Kiely, L., Conti, J., & Hay, P. (2023) · BMC Psychiatry · doi:10.1186/s12888-023-05098-9 · Cited by 27 · see citing works
“It has been argued that attempting to target too many factors in AN concurrently is problematic [97] and insufficient attention is paid to the importance of the therapeutic relationship in manualised therapies suggesting the ‘how’ may be even more important than the content for people with SE-AN.”
BackgroundFielding-Smith, S. F., Hayward, M., Strauss, C., Fowler, D., Paulik, G., & Thomas, N. (2015) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01129 · Cited by 17 · see citing works
“…(Kazdin, 2007), and Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org August 2015 | Volume 6 | Article 112911 interventionist-causal approaches (Kendler and Campbell, 2009; Freeman, 2011), in which specific aspects of self-experience are targeted experimentally in order to determine whether…”
BackgroundBody image concerns in patients with persecutory delusions
Waite, F., Diamond, R., Collett, N., Bold, E., Chadwick, E., & Freeman, D. (2023) · Psychological Medicine · doi:10.1017/s0033291722000800 · Cited by 15 · see citing works
Sheaves, B., Cropley, V. L., Moseley, P., Woodruff, P. W. R., Punton, G., Speth, C., Speth, J., Meerlo, P., & Brederoo, S. G. (2025) · Schizophrenia Bulletin · doi:10.1093/schbul/sbaf107 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
- Authors
- Kendler, K. S., & Campbell, J.
- Affiliations
- Virginia Commonwealth University (US)
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
- Corresponding author
- Kendler, K. S.
- Venue
- Psychological Medicine
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2008-10-10
- Volume
- 39
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 881-887
- ISSN
- 0033-2917 (ISSN-L)
- 1469-8978
- OpenAlex
- W2102971553
- Cited by
- 173
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 24 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 16 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 17 · 2017: 14 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 12 · 2014: 7 · 2013: 7 · 2012: 2
- FWCI
- 22.21
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Psychological Medicine (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Philosophy and History of Science
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Mental Health and Psychiatry
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Medicine, History, and Philosophy
- Keywords
- mind-body problem, non-reductionism, causal mechanisms, multilevel modeling, psychiatric research methodology, causal inference
- MeSH terms
- Mental Disorders, Humans, Models, Psychological, Psychophysiology, Causality, Confounding Factors, Epidemiologic
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
