History of Psychiatry

January 14, 2021

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many diagnoses can it make? The photographer and psychiatrist Hugh Welch Diamond, MD, shares insights into the humanity and stigma of mental illness in Victorian England.

November 20, 2020

A prominent forensic psychiatrist and the grandson of founding father Alexander Hamilton, Allan McLane Hamilton, MD, was a proponent for the use of nitrous oxide for diagnostic and therapeutic use.

October 21, 2020

Dr Pies offers an analysis of psychiatry’s place on the spectrum of science using “causality” and “meaning” as lenses.

October 16, 2020

Weaving the story of modern psychopharmacology’s birth leads us to a most surprising origin.

September 28, 2020

In the early 20th century, British and American doctors looked for the causes of mental illnesses elsewhere in the body, with gruesome results.

September 22, 2020

Avicenna may have been among the first physicians to document that anger is often a transitional state from melancholic depression to mania—implicitly recognizing the “switch” phenomenon.

September 18, 2020

In 18th-century France, physicians searched for the causes of mental illness and debated how best to treat it.

August 03, 2020

As we slowly and cautiously work toward a practice where space can be shared between therapist and patient, perhaps Freud’s “walking cure” can be enlightening.

July 22, 2020

Solving the problems of “troublesome” children throughout the ages.

July 20, 2020

An interview with Dr Anne Harrington, who offers a stimulating and thought-provoking historical perspective on the evolution of biological psychiatry from the German histopathologists to the present time in her recent book.

July 07, 2020

A paradigm shift is needed in order to solve the unprecedented complexities and challenges associated with the current global mental health crisis.

June 25, 2020

Adolf Hitler, the genocidal monster of the twentieth century, would not seem to be someone likely to seek psychological counseling, let alone respond.

May 28, 2020

Have we learned anything? Looking back at the Spanish flu epidemic as the world deals with the COVID pandemic.

May 08, 2020

Treatment for "the scourge of psychiatry" involved malariotherapy-infecting the patient with malaria; the resulting high fevers were believed to kill off the syphilis organisms.

April 29, 2020

In a time of panic, despair, and demoralization, art continues to inspire the author's reflections as it has over the last 40 years. Here, he shares some images that he finds inspirational and helpful. Even in winter there is hope.

April 16, 2020

This month in history: Determined to regard his patients as individuals, Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler sought to understand his patients and coined the term schizophrenia.

March 26, 2020

Across the centuries, March has been an eventful month for the insanity defense on both sides of the Atlantic, and the McNaughten rule remains the prevalent standard to this day.

March 09, 2020

Pseudopatients and their discontents: an historical perspective.

February 11, 2020

As historians and mental health professionals both know, in the words of the writer William Faulkner, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

January 29, 2020

In the early years, treatment was largely restricted to restraint and sedation with great emphasis placed on fresh air for prevention of mental illness. Later, the aim of treatment was to prevent transfer of patients to country asylums.