Portal:Psychiatry

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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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Vienna's Narrenturm — German for "fools' tower" — was one of the earliest buildings specifically designed as a "madhouse". It was built in 1784.
Vienna's NarrenturmGerman for "fools' tower" — was one of the earliest buildings specifically designed as a "madhouse". It was built in 1784.
Anti-psychiatry has been active for almost two centuries, and is the view that many psychiatric treatments are ultimately more damaging than helpful to patients. Psychiatry is seen by proponents of anti-psychiatry as a coercive instrument of oppression. According to anti-psychiatry, psychiatry involves an unequal power relationship between doctor and patient, and a highly subjective diagnostic process, leaving too much room for opinions and interpretations.

Anti-psychiatry originates in an objection to what some view as dangerous treatments. Examples include electroconvulsive therapy, insulin shock therapy, brain lobotomy, and the over-prescription of potentially dangerous pharmaceutical drugs. An immediate concern lies in the significant increase in prescribing psychiatric drugs for children. There were also concerns about mental health institutions. Every society, including liberal Western society, permits involuntary treatment or involuntary commitment of mental patients. (Full article...)

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The Burghölzli psychiatric clinic in Switzerland (1880s)
image credit: public domain

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Benjamin Rush (January 4, 1746 [O.S. December 24, 1745] – April 19, 1813) was a Founding Father of the United States. Rush lived in the state of Pennsylvania and was a physician, writer, educator, humanitarian, as well as the founder of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Rush signed the Declaration of Independence and attended the Continental Congress. He served as Surgeon General in the Continental army, and was blamed for criticising George Washington. Later in life, Rush became a professor of chemistry, medical theory, and clinical practice at the University of Pennsylvania.

As a leading physician, Rush had a major impact on the emerging medical profession. As an Enlightenment intellectual, he was committed to organizing all medical knowledge around explanatory theories, rather than rely on empirical methods. Rush argued that illness was the result of imbalances in the body's physical system and was caused by malfunctions in the brain. His approach prepared the way for later medical research, but Rush himself undertook none of it. He promoted public health by advocating clean environment and stressing the importance of personal and military hygiene. His study of mental disorder made him one of the founders of American psychiatry. (Full article...)

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