On the perception of madness

Since the beginning of recorded history, mental illness has been recognised as being primarily in the province of the healing profession. This view has continued, despite the fact that psychiatry left the mainstream of medicine with the development of asylums during the 19th century. With the advent of deinstitutionalization however, psychiatrists, particularly in Australia, have increasingly left public practice. As a result, the treatment of the severely and chronically mentally ill, especially those with behavioural disorder, has become neglected. It is argued that moves toward the mainstreaming of acute psychiatry to general hospitals offer a new opportunity for the profession to reassert itself in this essential but difficult area of psychiatric practice.