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psychiatryToday, a wide variety of treatment strategies are used in psychiatry, to combat many different psychological disorders. Psychiatry may involve physiological or psychological treatment, or a combination of the two. Physiological treatment generally involves the use of drugs influencing neurotransmitter functions in the brain, or electroconvulsive treatment (see electroconvulsive therapy). Psychiatrists are licensed physicians, specially trained to treat patients with mental disorders and to prescribe drugs. In recent years, psychological difficulties have lost much of the stigma they once had, and many people have sought psychiatric help who might have been reluctant to do so in the past.
See C. M. McGovern, Masters of Madness: Social Origins of the American Psychiatric Profession (1985); C. Thompson, ed., The Origins of Modern Psychiatry (1987); L. Robins and D. Regier, ed., Psychiatric Disorders in America (1991); R. Michaels, ed., Psychiatry (1992); H. Kaplan and B. Sadock, Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry (2 vol., rev. ed. 1993); T. M. Luhrmann, Of Two Minds: The Growing Disorder in American Psychiatry (2000).
The Columbia Encyclopedia. Copyright © 2001-09 Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
- depression, in psychiatry
Depression, in psychiatry, a symptom of mood disorder characterized by intense feelings of loss, sadness, hopelessness, failure, and rejection. The two major types of mood disorder are unipola...
- neurasthenia
Neurasthenia, condition characterized by general lassitude, irritability, lack of concentration, worry, and hypochondria. The term was introduced into psychiatry in 1869 by G. M. Beard, an Ame...
- fetishism
Fetishism, in psychiatry, a paraphilia (see perversion, sexual) in which erotic interest and satisfaction are centered on an inanimate object or a specific, nongenital part of the anatomy. Gen...
- narcosis
, state of stupor induced by drugs. The use of narcotics as a therapeutic aid in psychiatry is believed to have a history dating back to the use of opium for mental disorders by the early Egyp...
- electroconvulsive therapy
Electroconvulsive therapy in psychiatry, treatment of mood disorders by means of electricity; the broader term shock therapy also includes the use of chemical agents. The therapeutic possibili...
- psychosis
Psychosis, in psychiatry, a broad category of mental disorder encompassing the most serious emotional disturbances, often rendering the individual incapable of staying in contact with reality....
- neurosis
Neurosis, in psychiatry, a broad category of psychological disturbance, encompassing various mild forms of mental disorder. Until fairly recently, the term neurosis was broadly employed in con...
- Krafft-Ebing, Richard von
Krafft-Ebing, Richard von, 1840–1902, German physician and neurologist. Professor of psychiatry at Strasbourg (1872), Graz (1873), and Vienna (1889), he was recognized as an authority on devia...
- Jong, Erica
Jong, Erica (Erica Mann Jong), 1942–, American novelist and poet, b. New York City. She created a sensation with Fear of Flying (1973), a comic, picaresque novel of sex and psychiatry that cha...
- Kraepelin, Emil
Kraepelin, Emil, 1856–1926, German psychiatrist, educated at Würzburg (M.D., 1878). He also studied under Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig, and was appointed professor of psychiatry at the Univ. of Do...
