history of psychiatry

The Rise and Fall of the Age of Psychopharmacology

This book has been written by Edward Shorter. The publishers say: “The Age of Psychopharmacology began with a brilliant rise in the 1950s, when for the first time science entered the study of drugs that affect the brain and mind. But, esteemed…
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Mental Illness as Brain Disease: a Brief History Lesson

Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz was (and is) sometimes wrongly accused of denying that mental illnesses exist. However, what he actually said is that many (not all) instances of mental illness are the consequence of attempts to confront and tackle the problem…
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Researchers Call on Psychiatry to Abandon Biomedical Framework

“Scholars reveal concerns about biomedical psychiatry, calling for a more scientific, unique, and effective approach to mental health care.“ This report by Kevin Gallagher has been published by Mad in America. It begins: “A newly published study in the Journal of Theoretical…
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A Neuroscientist Evaluates the Standard Biological Model of Depression

This  research article  by Peter Sterling (Professor of Neuroscience) has been published by Mad in America. It begins: “Abstract Neuroscientists widely hypothesize that ‘depression’ arises from a brain disorder caused by some defect in a specific neural pathway. If so, we might identify…
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Causality in Mental Disturbance: A Review of the Neuroscience

“To be clear: there is no neuroscience to suggest that any mental function would be improved by ablating or stimulating a particular structure in the prefrontal cortex or its associated subcortical regions. To the contrary, what we know of the intrinsic organization…
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How did mental health become so biomedical? The progressive erosion of social determinants in historical psychiatric admission registers

This paper – available via Research Gate in the ‘History of Psychiatry’ category – is co-authored by Fritz Handerer, Peter Kinderman, Carsten Timmermann, and Sara J Tai. The abstract says: “This paper explores the historical developments of admission registers of psychiatric…
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Does Psychiatry Work? Review of ‘Desperate Remedies’ by Andrew Scull

This book review by Berties Bregman has been published in Commentary magazine. It begins: “When I was a young medical student and it came time to pick a specialty, the landscape was alarmingly broad. At one extreme was psychiatry. The noble goal…
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