Overview

Medicine underwent a sea change at the turn of the 20th century, but psychiatry stayed pretty much the same as it had been since Roman physician Claudius Galen described and treated madness, melancholia, and hysteria. The names have changed, and some powerful new drugs have been produced to replace the natural ones-but that's about all.Mental problems have been a challenge for doctors since Hippocrates. There has never been a cure, or even specific treatment, and many tactics have been invented as efforts to control the symptoms. It takes luck to hit a target you can't see, and none of these methods is always successful. The wholesale coinage of new names for madness, melancholia, and hysteria began in the 19th century, but none of the new diagnoses can be clearly distinguished from any of the others-or from normal. None of the new names identifies either the cause or the cure. Impressive new names for the same old problems do, however, suggest new knowledge, and that often promotes consultation with a doctor and a prescription for drugs.In the 20th century, the pharmaceutical industry produced and publicized a wealth of synthetic psychoactive drugs-those that block the symptoms of pain, anxiety, or depression-and the American government began prohibiting the natural substances. The promotion of these drugs has tricked many Americans into an addiction that most will not recognize unless and until they try to withdraw from prescribed drugs.The system of diagnosis and treatment presented here demystifies psychiatric diagnosis and outlines historical methods of symptom control. It explains which disorders will respond to drug treatment, which will not, and where drugs may simply add the possibility of addiction to the original problem.

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9781727653212

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