Portal:Psychiatry

The Psychiatry Portal

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

Initial psychiatric assessment begins with taking a case history and conducting a mental status examination. Laboratory tests, physical examinations, and psychological assessments may also be used. On occasion, neuroimaging or 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) was published in May 2013. However, its release coincided with a statement by then-NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) director Thomas Insel noting that the manual lacks validity compared to other medical specialties due to the absence of objective laboratory measures (biomarkers) for diagnosis. (Full article...)

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The mental status examination or mental state examination, abbreviated MSE, is an important part of the clinical assessment process in psychiatric practice. It is a structured way of observing and describing a patient's current state of mind, under the domains of appearance, attitude, behavior, mood and affect, speech, thought process, thought content, perception, cognition, insight and judgment. There are some minor variations in the subdivision of the MSE and the sequence and names of MSE domains.

The purpose of the MSE is to obtain a comprehensive cross-sectional description of the patient's mental state, which, when combined with the biographical and historical information of the psychiatric history, allows the clinician to make an accurate diagnosis and formulation, which are required for coherent treatment planning. (Full article...)

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Australian soldiers near Ypres in 1917, during World War I. Soldier on left is likely suffering from shellshock, now described as Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

image credit: public domain

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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...)

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

Image 1Danvers State Hospital, Danvers, Massachusetts, Kirkbride Complex, c. 1893 (from Psychiatric hospital)
Image 2Emil Kraepelin studied and promoted ideas of disease classification for mental disorders. (from History of psychiatry)
Image 3Lord 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 4The Art Nouveau-styled Röykkä Hospital, formerly known as Nummela Sanatorium, in Röykkä, Finland (from Psychiatric hospital)
Image 5Republican Vilnius Psychiatric Hospital in Naujoji Vilnia, one of the largest health facilities in Lithuania, built in 1902 (from Psychiatric hospital)
Image 6Traverse City State Hospital in Traverse City, Michigan, U.S., in operation from 1881 to 1989 (from Psychiatric hospital)
Image 7Springfield State Hospital, Sykesville, Maryland, Cottage Plan, c. 1896 (from Psychiatric hospital)
Image 8The various restraints and apparatuses pictured were utilized within Hanwell Asylum in London to restrain patients. (from Psychiatric hospital)
Image 9Plan of the Bethlem Royal Hospital, an early public asylum for the mentally ill.
Image 10William 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 11York Retreat, built in the late 18th century by William Tuke, a pioneer in moral treatment of the mentally ill (from Psychiatric hospital)
Image 12psychiatric medication and an ECT machine, in Berlin Museum of medical history (from History of psychiatry)
Image 13The York Retreat (c.1796) was built by William Tuke, a pioneer of moral treatment for the insane. (from History of psychiatry)
Image 14Otto Loewi's work led to the identification of the first neurotransmitter, acetylcholine. (from History of psychiatry)
Image 15Dr. 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)