Psychiatry: the battered child of medicine

Psychiatry has had a troubled history. After the French Revolution "moral treatment" brought to America a period of effective and humane hospital treatment, but this progress was corrupted by the Industrial Revolution, and psychiatry was rejected by society as well as by medicine. Although the Freudian enlightenment and the introduction of social psychiatry have led to greater acceptance, today's criticisms are strident. Psychiatry is criticized for imprecise diagnosis, conceptual vagaries, jargon, therapeutic impotence and class bias. The American system of mental-health care is seen by many as a disaster. The federal comprehensive Community Mental Health Act has been aborted at an early stage. Skills involved in the practice of psychotherapy are not unique to the profession. Social ills, over which psychiatry has little control, play a large part in causing mental disability and retardation. Nevertheless, though embattled, psychiatry has contributed to medical practice and to the humane consciousness of society.