Mainstreaming psychiatry: some personal commentary

The psychiatric education establishment is depicted as zealously searching for a set of educational principles that will allow maximum bandwagonry, maximum fundability. "Medical mainstream" is the current catch phrase selected for discussion. The contention of the author is that--instead-sound bio-social principles, easily available from child psychiatry as a field, would provide a dynamic substructure that would not be voguish and evanescent. Far from pursuing the medical mainstream, psychiatry might be more secure as an academic discipline were it to adopt an evangelical, illuminating attitude toward other medical specialties. In short, the proposal is made that general psychiatry and its fellow medical specialities ought to be brought into the child psychiatry mainstream. What child psychiatry could give to medicine and to general psychiatry is considered under these headings: a developmental perspective, a behavioral science sophistication, a medical foundation and lifestyle ("Aesculapian authority"), a humanistic attitude, and a stance of patient advocacy.