Psychiatry

Psychiatry is the branch of medicine that diagnoses, treats, and studies mental illness and behavioral conditions. While all physicians will encounter patients with mental illnesses and any of them may treat it, psychiatrists specialize in these areas, being more extensively trained in the differential diagnosis (distinguishing various forms) and treatment of mental illness and are professionally required to keep up to date on the newest developments in the field of mental illness. Additionally psychologists, nurse practitioners, and social workers can provide psychiatric care though of these only the nurse practitioners may prescribe medication.

History

Psychiatric illnesses were for some time characterised as disorders of function of the mind rather than the brain, although the distinction is not always obvious. In the current state of knowledge this distinction does not always hold true, as many psychiatric conditions have physical etiologies.

Related Topics:
Mind - Brain - Etiologies

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For a long period of history, neurology and psychiatry were a single discipline, and following their division the tremendous advances in neurosciences (especially in genetics and neuroimaging) recently are bringing areas of the two disciplines back together. Indeed, in a 2002 review article in the American Journal of Psychiatry, Professor Joseph B. Martin, Dean of Harvard Medical School and a neurologist by training, wrote that "the separation of the (neurological versus psychiatric disorders) is arbitrary, often influenced by beliefs rather than proven scientific observations. And the fact that the brain and mind are one makes the separation artificial anyway" (Martin 2002).

Related Topics:
Neurology - Neurosciences - Genetics - Neuroimaging - American Journal of Psychiatry - Joseph B. Martin - Harvard Medical School

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Psychiatry was at first a pragmatic discipline that was part of general medicine, combining medicine and practical psychology. The work of Emil Kraepelin laid the foundations of scientific psychiatry. A neurologist, Sigmund Freud, used these same powers of medically-based observation to develop the field of psychoanalysis. For many years, Freudian theories dominated psychiatric thinking.

Related Topics:
Emil Kraepelin - Sigmund Freud - Psychoanalysis

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The discovery of lithium carbonate as a treatment for bipolar disorder (and shortly thereafter after by the development of typical antipsychotics for treatment of schizophrenia,) followed by the development of fields such as molecular biology and tools such as brain imaging has led to psychiatry re-discovering its origins in physical and observational medicine without losing sight of its humane dimension.

Related Topics:
Lithium carbonate - Bipolar disorder - Typical antipsychotics - Schizophrenia - Molecular biology - Brain imaging

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