Table 1.

The neo‐Kraepelinian credo ¹⁵

1.	Psychiatry is a branch of medicine.
2.	Psychiatry should utilize modem scientific methodologies and base its practice on scientific knowledge.
3.	Psychiatry treats people who are sick and who require treatment for mental illnesses.
4.	There is a boundary between the normal and the sick.
5.	There are discrete mental illnesses. Mental illnesses are not myths. There is not one but many mental illnesses. It is the task of scientific psychiatry, as of other medical specialties, to investigate the causes, diagnosis, and treatment of these mental illnesses.
6.	The focus of psychiatric physicians should be particularly on the biological aspects of mental illness.
7.	There should be an explicit and intentional concern with diagnosis and classification.
8.	Diagnostic criteria should be codified, and a legitimate and valued area of research should be to validate such criteria by various techniques. Further, departments of psychiatry in medical schools should teach these criteria and not depreciate them, as has been the case for many years.
9.	In research efforts directed at improving the reliability and validity of diagnosis and classification, statistical techniques should be utilized.