Greg Eghigian

Concerns are raised about DSM-5 revisions in the definition of depression. Many worry that eliminating the bereavement exception in the guidelines for the diagnosis of major depressive disorder represents a dangerous move.

Very important—but generally neglected—aspects of history provide something of a glimpse of what historians of mental health and illness are mulling over these days.

The history of the 19th and early 20th century asylum is a history of locking up patients . . . or so it has seemed. Since the 1950s and 1960s when the history of psychiatry first took off, scholars have generally conceded that asylums were primarily institutions of confinement. New research indicates otherwise.

A common misconception about the history of mental illness is that, before Freud and psychoanalysis, there was no such thing as talk therapies or what is commonly known today as psychotherapy.

Historical records reveal Don Juan syndrome was a recognized diagnosis that referred to forms of hypersexuality and sex addiction.

Here, in the conclusion to his 1890 discussion about extending psychiatric care to lawbreakers and moral outcasts, A.B. Richardson highlights the importance of both material structures and structured activity in treatment. His statement stands as a pithy summary of the 19th century alienist idea of therapy as a form of “management.”

Psychology and psychiatry at the turn of the last century considered the will an indispensable category. Not so today.

In a recent college course, Dr Eghigian asked his students to discuss long-term patterns and trends in the history of the handling of mental illness. He was struck by a recurring tendency. Most students portrayed the history of mental health in one of two ways.

While there has been a robust interest for decades among scholars in the history of psychiatry, comparatively little has been shown the history of clinical psychology, despite its marked impact on mental health care.

Alcohol has had a long and checkered history in human affairs. Dating back millennia to ancient Egypt, its consumption has been associated with sacredness as well as frivolity.