History of Psychiatry

Understanding the History of Psychiatry is important for all physicians to understand. Progress in mental health care has not always been in a straight line, and patients have also suffered because of this. Understanding how treatments and views of mental illness inform care today is important for physicians to appropriately provide treatment.

What is psychiatry? It is a medical specialty that has been vilified and misunderstood. It is one of the last fields of medicine that remains in many ways still in the dark ages in terms of knowledge and understanding. Yet it is also the humanizing specialty, one of the few where the patient-doctor relationship remains critical. But it is also a specialty that has been torn apart by its own practitioners, between barbaric practices like lobotomy that were performed with benevolent intent, to the ongoing struggle to define what mental illness is. A good psychiatrist requires a biopsychosocial approach. Knowing pharmacology is not enough, because medications alone do not solve the problem. All treatments need a combination of biological, social, psychological, and behaviourial interventionsthe greatest improvements.

“Normal is a setting on a washing machine.” ― Christopher Barzak
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