Abstract
A look back at our discipline’s history is needed to understand our current institutions and systems of care since they were not created de novo but represent the product of many decisions that we collectively made in very particular historical contexts. I am going to emphasize the asylum era, the community psychiatry movement, the group of antipsychiatrists, and the disgraceful role that psychiatry played in Nazi Germany. A historical perspective will allow us to set priorities for a redesign of mental health that provides equitable and high-quality care. Professionalism demands our active engagement in advocating for humane care for all people with serious mental illness.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Kellner D, Pierce C, editors. Marxism, revolution, and utopia: collected papers of Herbert Marcuse. Abingdon: Routledge; 2014.
Shorter E. A history of psychiatry: from the era of the asylum to the age of Prozac. New York: Wiley; 1997.
Shorter E. History of psychiatry. Curr Opin Psychiatry. 2008;21:593–7.
Jablensky A. Living in a Kraepelinian world: Kraepelin’s impact on modern psychiatry. Hist Psychiatry. 2007;18:381–8.
Adityanjee AYA, Theodoridis D, Vieweg VR. Dementia praecox to schizophrenia: the first 100 years. Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 1999;53:437–48.
McGlashan TH. Eugen Bleuler: centennial anniversary of his 1911 publication of dementia praecox or the group of schizophrenias. Schizophr Bull. 2011;37:1101–3.
Diamond SA. Who were the alienists? Psychology Today. 2018. Available from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evil-deeds/201801/who-were-the-alienists. Accessed on 7/1/2019.
Goffman E. Asylums. Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates. Garden City: Anchor Books; 1961.
King LJ. A brief history of psychiatry: millennia past and present–part II. Ann Clin Psychiatry. 1999;11:47–54.
Marcos LR. Dysfunctions in public psychiatric bureaucracies. Am J Psychiatry. 1988;145:331–4.
Kosky R. From morality to madness: a reappraisal of the asylum movement in psychiatry 1800–1940. Aust N Z J Psychiatry. 1986;20:180–7.
Sisti DA, Segal AG, Emanuel EJ. Improving long-term psychiatric care: bring back the asylum. JAMA. 2015;313:243–4.
Treatment Advocacy Center. Road runners 2019. Available from: https://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/road-runners. Accessed on 7/1/2019.
Haas LF. Dorothea Lynde Dix (1802–87). J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 1994;57:1465.
Treatment Advocacy Center. Beyond beds. The vital role of a full continuum of care 2017. Available from: https://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/beyond-beds. Accessed on 7/1/2019.
Schildbach S, Schildbach C. Criminalization through transinstitutionalization: a critical review of the Penrose hypothesis in the context of compensation imprisonment. Front Psych. 2018;9:534.
Mundt AP, Chow WS, Arduino M, Barrionuevo H, Fritsch R, Girala N, et al. Psychiatric hospital beds and prison populations in South America since 1990: does the Penrose hypothesis apply? JAMA Psychiat. 2015;72:112–8.
Maslach C, Leiter MP. Understanding the burnout experience: recent research and its implications for psychiatry. World Psychiatry. 2016;15:103–11.
Kontos N, Freudenreich O, Querques J. Outpatient institutionalization – 100 words. Br J Psychiatry. 2014;205:339.
Berlim MT, Fleck MP, Shorter E. Notes on antipsychiatry. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 2003;253:61–7.
Babini VP. Looking back: Italian psychiatry from its origins to Law 180 of 1978. J Nerv Ment Dis. 2014;202:428–31.
Kelly BD, Bracken P, Cavendish H, Crumlish N, MacSuibhne S, Szasz T, et al. The myth of mental illness: 50 years after publication: what does it mean today? Ir J Psychol Med. 2010;27:35–43.
Drescher J. Out of DSM: depathologizing homosexuality. Behav Sci. 2015;5:565–75.
Frellick M. AMA declares obesity a disease: medscape psychiatry. 2013. Available from: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/806566. Accessed on 7/1/2019.
Reilly PR. Eugenics and involuntary sterilization: 1907–2015. Annu Rev Genomics Hum Genet. 2015;16:351–68.
Lifton RJ. The Nazi doctors: medical killing and the psychology of genocide. New York: Basic Books; 1986.
Torrey EF, Yolken RH. Psychiatric genocide: Nazi attempts to eradicate schizophrenia. Schizophr Bull. 2010;36:26–32.
Strous RD. Psychiatry during the Nazi era: ethical lessons for the modern professional. Ann General Psychiatry. 2007;6:8.
Seeman MV. Psychiatry in the Nazi era. Can J Psychiatr. 2005;50:218–25.
Appleman LI. Deviancy, dependency, and disability: the forgotten history of eugenics and mass incarceration. Duke Law J. 2018;68:417–78.
Institute of Medicine (IOM). Crossing the quality chasm: a new health system for the 21st century. Washington, DC: National Academy Press; 2001.
Langan J, Mercer SW, Smith DJ. Multimorbidity and mental health: can psychiatry rise to the challenge? Br J Psychiatry. 2013;202:391–3.
ABIM Foundation, American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine, European Federation of Internal Medicine. Medical professionalism in the new millennium: a physician charter. Ann Intern Med. 2002;136:243–6.
Thibault GE. Humanism in medicine: what does it mean and why is it more important than ever? Acad Med. 2019;94(8):1074–7.
Schweitzer A. Aus meinem Leben und Denken. Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch; 1995. p. 1931.
Additional Resources
Books
Kotowicz ZRD. Laing and the paths of anti-psychiatry. London: Routledge; 1997. – While written around R. D. Laing, this book brings the reformist spirit of the 1960s to life, including other writers and movements of the time.
Scull A. Madness: a very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2011. – The author who is a sociologist brings to life in this small volume from Oxford University Press’s Very Short Introduction series how societies since antiquity have understood and coped with “madness,” or with people suffering from a serious mental illness, as we refer to them today.
Shorter E. A history of psychiatry: from the era of the asylum to the age of Prozac. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc; 1997. – A well-organized and logical history of psychiatry that includes the origins of asylum psychiatry, the asylum era itself, and subsequent social reforms and attempts to establish a more scientifically-based biological psychiatry.
Articles
Freudenreich O, Kontos N. “Professionalism, physicianhood, and psychiatric practice”: conceptualizing and implementing a senior psychiatry resident seminar in reflective and inspired doctoring. Psychosomatics. 2019;60:246–54. – Summary of a course on professionalism that I taught together with my friend and colleague for ten years.
Marcos LR. Dysfunctions in public psychiatric bureaucracies. Am J Psychiatry. 1988;145:331–4. – One of the most important articles I read that opened my eyes to the importance of functioning bureaucracies (a term that has gotten a bad reputation because many bureaucracies are dysfunctional). The author helpfully applies Max Weber’s theory of bureaucracies to public sector psychiatry in order to explain many frustrations that you will be quite familiar with.
Strous RD. Psychiatry during the Nazi era: ethical lessons for the modern professional. Ann Gen Psychiatry. 2007;6:8. – An important call to continue to teach ethics in medicine that is informed by the lessons from history.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Freudenreich, O. (2020). History of Schizophrenia Care. In: Psychotic Disorders. Current Clinical Psychiatry. Humana, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29450-2_34
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29450-2_34
Published:
Publisher Name: Humana, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-29449-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-29450-2
eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)