Question

Describe the history of psychiatry in the 19th and 20th centuries. Please be thorough in your answer.

Answer 1

Dr. Benjamin Rush is known as "father of American Psychiatry". He firstly said that mental illness is a state of mind. He completely ignored the fact that it is "a possessions of demons". Psychiatry started to develop in the middle of 19th century.

In the late 17th century, privately run asylums for the insane began to proliferate and expand in size. The term Psychiatry was first coined by a German Physician. His name was Johann Christian Reil. This term was coined in the year 1808. It means "the medical treatment of souls".

Hippocrates discovered that mental illness come from "natural occurrences in the body". He studied mental illness and also tried to understand medical aspect of it. Helen Boyle worked in the field of psychiatry in the years of 1889 - 1950.She was first female psychiatrist from Irish- British origin.

Various therapies like hydrotherapy, metrazol convulsions and insulin shock therapy became popular in the year 1930. By the year 1950, various other therapies like artificial fever therapy and electroshock therapy also became so popular for the treatment of mental illness.

Meyer was a person who gave and explained the term "Mental Hygiene". Wuthering Heights was the person who used the term "mental illness" for various illnesses such as "madness", "lunacy" and "insanity"; in the year 1847.

In the year 1887, Schizophrenia was described as distinct mental disorder by Kraepelin. He also made distinctions between various psychotic disorders. He distinguished the terms like dementia and manic depression.

So, various personalities and organisations were working at same time in the field of psychiatry in 19th and 20th century. All these caused huge development in this field which led to removal of various superstitions related to mental illness.