The emergence of child psychiatry as an academic discipline

Abstract

Child psychiatry has come a long way since its tenuous beginnings fifty years ago. A few of the pioneers are still around to remind us of our short history. Its development has not by any means been linear and, from time to time over the years, it has wandered off into nonmedical fields and practices that have impeded its incorporation into the body of medicine. Within the past two decades, it has relinquished its purely guidance role and has been trying, although in a small way, to generate its own specific theory and research. However, it has still some way to go before it can get itself less ambivalently accepted in the medical schools. In making its approach to orthodox medicine, it should continue to remember its own history and not relinquish the many skills it acquired and is still acquiring from the behavioral sciences.