Portal:Psychiatry

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The Psychiatry Portal

Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of deleterious mental conditions. These include various matters related to mood, behaviour, cognition, perceptions, and emotions.

Initial psychiatric assessment of a person begins with creating a case history and conducting a mental status examination. Physical examinations, psychological tests, and laboratory tests may be conducted. On occasion, neuroimaging or other neurophysiological studies are performed. Mental disorders are diagnosed in accordance with diagnostic manuals such as the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), edited by the World Health Organization (WHO), and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). The fifth edition of the DSM (DSM-5), published in May 2013, reorganized the categories of disorders and added newer information and insights consistent with current research.

Treatment may include psychotropics (psychiatric medicines) and psychotherapy, and also other modalities such as assertive community treatment, community reinforcement, substance-abuse treatment, and supported employment. Treatment may be delivered on an inpatient or outpatient basis, depending on the severity of functional impairment or risk to the individual or community. Research within psychiatry is conducted on an interdisciplinary basis with other professionals, such as epidemiologists, nurses, social workers, occupational therapists, and clinical psychologists. (Full article...)

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The Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act of 1956 (Public Law 84-830) was an Act of Congress passed to improve mental health care in the United States territory of Alaska. It became the focus of a major political controversy after opponents nicknamed it the "Siberia Bill" and denounced it as being part of a communist plot to hospitalize and brainwash Americans. Campaigners asserted that it was part of an international Jewish, Roman Catholic or psychiatric conspiracy intended to establish United Nations-run concentration camps in the United States.

The legislation in its original form was sponsored by the Democratic Party, but after it ran into opposition, it was rescued by the conservative Republican Senator Barry Goldwater. Under Goldwater's sponsorship, a version of the legislation without the commitment provisions that were the target of intense opposition from a variety of far-right, anti-Communist and fringe religious groups was passed by the United States Senate. The controversy still plays a prominent role in the Church of Scientology's account of its campaign against psychiatry. (Full article...)

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Credit: public domain

Illustration from A Rake's Progress, by William Hogarth (circa 1730s), showing Bethlem Royal Hospital, (origin of the word bedlam)

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Thomas Stephen Szasz (/ˈsɑːs/ SAHSS; April 15, 1920 – September 8, 2012) was a psychiatrist and academic, a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, a professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York, and starting in 1990, he was professor emeritus of psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. He was well known as a social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, of what he saw as social control aims of medicine in modern society, and scientism. His books The Myth of Mental Illness (1961) and The Manufacture of Madness (1970) set out some of the arguments he is most associated with.

Szasz argued that mental illnesses are not real in the sense that cancers are real. Except for a few identifiable brain diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, there are “neither biological or chemical tests nor biopsy or necropsy findings for verifying or falsifying DSM diagnoses", i.e. there are no objective methods for detecting the presence or absence of mental illness.(Full article...)

General images

The following are images from various psychiatry-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Dr. Philippe Pinel at the Salpêtrière, 1795 by Tony Robert-Fleury. Pinel ordering the removal of chains from patients at the Paris Asylum for insane women. (from History of psychiatry)
Image 2psychiatric medication and an ECT machine, in Berlin Museum of medical history (from History of psychiatry)
Image 3Otto Loewi's work led to the identification of the first neurotransmitter, acetylcholine. (from History of psychiatry)
Image 4Lord Shaftesbury, a vigorous campaigner for the reform of lunacy law in England, and the Head of the Lunacy Commission for 40 years. (from History of psychiatry)
Image 5The York Retreat (c.1796) was built by William Tuke, a pioneer of moral treatment for the insane. (from History of psychiatry)
Image 6William A. F. Browne was an influential reformer of the lunatic asylum in the mid-19th century, and an advocate of the new 'science' of phrenology. (from History of psychiatry)
Image 7Danvers State Hospital, Danvers, Massachusetts, Kirkbride Complex, c. 1893 (from Psychiatric hospital)
Image 8Republican Vilnius Psychiatric Hospital in Naujoji Vilnia, one of the largest health facilities in Lithuania, built in 1902 (from Psychiatric hospital)
Image 9York Retreat, built in the late 18th century by William Tuke, a pioneer in moral treatment of the mentally ill (from Psychiatric hospital)
Image 10The Art Nouveau-styled Röykkä Hospital, formerly known as Nummela Sanatorium, in Röykkä, Finland (from Psychiatric hospital)
Image 11Emil Kraepelin studied and promoted ideas of disease classification for mental disorders. (from History of psychiatry)
Image 12Traverse City State Hospital in Traverse City, Michigan, U.S., in operation from 1881 to 1989 (from Psychiatric hospital)
Image 13Niuvanniemi Hospital in Niuva, Finland (from Psychiatric hospital)
Image 14Plan of the Bethlem Royal Hospital, an early public asylum for the mentally ill.