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Note that psychiatry is practiced by psychiatrists, psychology by psychologists. Psychiatrists are medical doctors and may prescribe drugs. Psychology is the broader study of behaviour and thought processes not just in the context of mental health. Clinical psychologists specialise in mental health and have extensive training in therapy and psychological testing, they do not usually prescribe drugs.

1 Mind versus brain

Psychiatric illnesses were for some time characterised as disorders of function of the mind rather than the brain, although the distinction is not always obvious. In the current state of knowledge this distinction does not always hold true, as many psychiatric conditions have physical etiologies.

For a long period of history, neurology and psychiatry were a single discipline, and following their division the steady advance in understanding of the basic functioning of neurons and the brain is bringing areas of the two disciplines back together.

Psychiatry was at first a pragmatic discipline that was part of general medicine, combining medicine and practical psychology. The work of Emil Kraepelin laid the foundations of scientific psychiatry, but was derailed by the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud. For many years, Freudian theories dominated psychiatric thinking.

The discovery of lithium carbonate as a treatment for bipolar disorder, followed by the development of fields such as molecular biologyMolecular biology is the study of biology at a molecular level. The field overlaps with other areas of biology, particularly genetics and biochemistry. Molecular biology chiefly concerns itself with understanding the interactions between the various syste and tools such as brain imagingBrain imaging is a fairly recent discipline within medicine and neuroscience. Brain imaging falls into two broad categories structural imaging and functional imaging. The former deals with the overall structure of the brain and the precise diagnosis of in has led to psychiatry re-discovering its origins in physical and observational medicine without losing sight of its humane dimension.

2 Anti-psychiatry

Unlike most other areas of medicine, there is a politicised anti-psychiatryBeginning in the 1960s, a movement called anti-psychiatry claimed that psychiatric patients are not ill but are individuals that do not share the same consensus reality as most people in society. Adherents of this movement often refer to the myth of menta movement that opposes the practices of, and in some cases the existence of, psychiatry. Some opponents of psychiatry state that selective financing by large multinational drug companies of both high ranking professional psychiatrists, research and educational material has led the practice of psychiatry to be subversively, and in some cases inhumanely, misled. These claims are strongly contested by psychiatrists.

3 Famous figures in psychiatry

Psychiatrists:

• Eugene BleulerEugene Bleuler (Eugen Bleuler) ( 30 April, 1857 9 February, 1940) was a Swiss psychiatrist most notable for his contributions to the understanding of mental illness and the naming of schizophrenia. Bleuler was born in Zollikon, a small town near Zurich in
• John CadeDr John Frederick Joseph Cade Australian psychiatrist and discoverer (in 1948) of the effects of lithium carbonate as a mood stabilizer in the treatment of Bipolar Disorder. Lithium was one of the first chemical treatments of mental illness. Cade's discov
• Milton Erickson
• Sigmund Freud
• David HealyDavid Healy is a psychiatrist who is currently Reader in Psychological Medicine at Cardiff University College of Medicine. He is the author of a number of books and is particularly noted for his books detailing the history of the development of psychophar
• Karl JaspersKarl Theodor Jaspers ( February 23, 1883 February 26, 1969), a German psychiatrist and philosopher, had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry and philosophy. Biography Jaspers was born in Oldenburg in 1883 to a mother from a local farming comm
• Carl Gustav Jung
• Radovan Karadžic
• Antoni Kepinski
• Emil Kraepelin
• Richard von Krafft-Ebbing
• R. D. Laing
• W. H. R. Rivers
• Kurt Schneider
• Thomas Szasz

Others:

• Kay Redfield Jamison - a psychologist who, whilst not a psychiatrist herself, is professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a MacArthur Fellow.