Psychiatry

A cheap psychiatrist.

Psychiatry is the branch of medicine that deals with the diagnosis, study, prevention and treatment of mental disorders in humans and, like other fields of science, is not safe from unfounded criticism or woo. It is particularly hated by Scientologists, who refrain from taking psychiatric drugs, and is targeted by conspiracy theories from said cult religion. Due to its checkered past and controversial practices like mass murder, lobotomy, pathologizing normal mental states, pathologizing social deviance, use of physical restraints, cartel behavior vis-a-vis powerful drugs, coercing drugs onto children, forced drugging, indefinite detention of 'voluntary' patients, political torture, and electroconvulsive therapy (all of which except lobotomy and murder are still in use), psychiatry has garnered a significant amount of academic and folk opposition, known as anti-psychiatry.

Psychiatry vs. Psychology

Psychiatry as a profession should not be confused with clinical psychology, which is closely related. All psychiatrists are psychologists, but not all psychologists are psychiatrists. Although much of their respective practices overlap with each other, psychiatrists differ from psychologists in that they have medical training and are licensed to prescribe medications and order lab tests (exception: Medical psychologist). Psychologists (an ordinary psychologist - Non-Medical Psychologist), by comparison, have an advanced degree in psychology (most often a Ph.D. or a PsD.) and use a non-medical approach involving talk therapy and psychological testing.

Early and modern psychiatry

Interestingly enough, early psychiatry involved purging Satan from patients, and today religion is still relevant. People who believe in an angry, punishing God are more likely to suffer psychiatric symptoms than people without that belief. Even earlier than purging Satan, holes were drilled into the skull.

In the 19th century, psychiatrists diagnosed young men with mental illness based on the fact that they masturbated. Masturbation was thought to rob 'vital forces' from the body, and potentially cause insanity. "Sexual neurosis" was diagnosed in younger men and was said to be caused by masturbation. Canadian physician Stephen Lett stated

“”“in early life, the child who thus pollutes himself [with masturbation] retards and arrests the healthy development of his nervous system, and the practice in such a one tends to idiocy and imbecility.”

During most of the 20^th century, psychiatry was dominated by the psychoanalytic school started by Sigmund Freud and developed in non-Freudian directions by Carl Jung and Alfred Adler and others. This has since fallen out of favour. These days, psychiatrists tend to prefer treatments such as newer forms of psychotherapy and pharmaceuticals like antidepressants (although the efficacy of these has been called into question from time to time). Psychiatrists treat a wide variety of "conditions" that don't have any reliable blood tests (or the like) ranging from phobias to personality disorders, autism, gender dysphoria, PTSD and schizophrenia. In some cases their subject matter overlaps with that of neurology, such as various forms of dementia, brain injury and sleep disorders like sleep paralysis. Many of the first psychiatrists were in fact trained as neurologists, including Freud.

Diagnosis

In the United States, the American Psychiatric Association's official handbook, the DSM (now in its 5^th edition) is meant to be a universal guide to psychiatric diagnosis using standardized criteria. Any revisions to the DSM are generally met with controversy over the validity of its categories and whether certain disorders are real diseases versus social constructs. (The latest changes involved adding several new disorders, removing others — most contentiously of all, Asperger's syndrome, which is now conflated with autism as part of a severity scale — and renaming several more, such as changing "gender identity disorder" to the less stigmatizing "gender dysphoria".) Because of the prevalence of psychiatric disorders in the developed world and the ready availability of medical information over the Internet, it is not uncommon for people to self-diagnose with various conditions. Physicians tend to look down on this sort of thing, however.

See also

• Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Sigmund Freud
• Scientology
• Anti-psychiatry
• Mental illness denial

References

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