Hans Pols

Psychotic episodes are devastating for the individuals who have them, their friends, and families. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if individuals could receive treatment before the first psychotic episode strikes, so that it could be avoided altogether?

In the sixth edition of his famous 2-volume textbook Psychiatrie, which appeared in 1899, Emil Kraepelin introduced the by now well-known distinction between dementia praecox (soon to be called schizophrenia) and manic-depressive illness.

In this blog, Dr Pols reviews The Politics of War Trauma: The Aftermath of World War II in Eleven European Countries, by Jolande Withuis and Annet Mooij (eds).

This book aims to demonstrate how, regrettably, over the last twenty years or so, typically American conceptions of mental illness have been exported successfully to the rest of the world. According to Watters, the often enthusiastic international reception of DSM-III and IV has homogenized human suffering all over the world.