[Ecology and psychiatry]

Psychiatry, with a recent history as to a pragmatic discipline and a progressive development from the individual to the social, finds a holistic perspective of singular heuristic value in the ecological proposition. Ecopsychiatry is a general approach in which the diverse sources of psychiatric knowledge are grouped in order to get a view of macro-reality emerging from a methodological integration of behavior sciences and a unified theory orientating to a realistic praxis in the normative. This paper reviews the rationale, notion and historical development of the ecological principle in psychiatry. After a superficial analysis of the first contributions in this field, it is intented to outline the real of the actual psychiatric ecology mentioning their methods and contents. Following Bateson's postulation it is emphasized that ecological principles cannot be isolated from their own ideological contents--the ecological system necessarily involves science's ideas for their concepts need a constant evaluation.