Psychiatry in Development

   There seems to be a wall between the normal people and the mentally incompetent ones, a wall that separates happiness and misery, a wall that not just physically exists - walls and closed doors of asylums, but also the thick and opaque wall between our hearts.

   Before I read the book, I believed that mental disorders were tainted with a strong religious flavor and a mysterious color. The madmen and their families must had done something wrong before, and so they deserved the punishment. Of course, I was totally wrong. Yet, we would never fully learn the world of psychiatry if we never collect the courage to get closer to have a look at it. Tom Burns broke a window, allowing us to have a quick look to demystify those once sensational mental disorders.

   In the book, the author first clarified the definition of psychiatry - It is a science similar to many other branches of medical diseases, but what make it different are that we might have some of the symptoms of mental disorders described but we do not have the diseases and that those patients who had the diseases should always be forced to take the treatments. Generally speaking, the so-called definition indeed are general descriptions of this specialty, no definite and certain definition can be found in the book. Reasons for this may be that psychiatry are making remarkable strides in recent years and that the definitions also keep changing and varies in different time and places.

   What makes psychiatry a myth is that we still don’t know much about it. As the book says, we have a much more tolerant attitudes towards the mentally incompetent persons and their families and we have a more systematic approach to deal with those disorders. But these are still far from enough. There are still many controversies involved with politics and ethics, validity and reliability, drug and power abusing etc which hinder the development of psychiatry itself. And with the development of science, genetic research, brain washing, thought control and many other new diagnostic and treatment measures constantly emerge, which, as the author implied, can be both the blessing and curse.

   Through A Very Short Introduction to Psychiatry, we laymen are able to glimpse the development of psychiatric in a hundred years. And as we know more about this science, we are also kindly warned that the viewpoints have an expiration date, too.

2016-12-31

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