Tag: psychiatry
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Screenwriting: psychiatry in reverse
Stephen PottsEdinburgh, United Kingdom Introduction The subject matter of medicine is inherently dramatic. Decisions taken by professionals who are highly skilled, but still human and therefore flawed, are applied to suffering patients in situations of pressure and can have radically diverse outcomes: life or death; disability or cure: a healthy baby born to a healthy…
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Looking back and forward: a personal view on public care
Matthew ReidyShrewsbury, Massachusetts, United States September 10, 1927Mrs. Mary Reidy99 Downing Street, Worcester, Mass.Dear Mrs. Reidy: Your little girl Katherine was examined in our out-patient clinic on Thursday, and she presents a complicated problem. She is nearly 12 years of age and psychological tests show that she has a mental age of less than 3…
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Calibrating the messiah complex: A success and a failure
Daniel LuftigUnited States It had been Fat’s delusion for years that he could help people. His psychiatrist once told him that to get well he would have to do two things; get off dope (which he hadn’t done) and stop trying to help people (he still tried to help people). — VALIS1 The term “messiah complex,” though…
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Heinz Lehmann and the dawn of psychopharmacology
Benjamin Chin-YeeToronto, Ontario, Canada In the spring of 1953 at the Verdun Protestant Hospital in Montreal, the psychiatrist Heinz Lehmann initiated the first trial of chlorpromazine in North America, treating “psychomotor excitement” in patients with diagnoses ranging from manic depression to schizophrenia.1,2 Within weeks, the drug proved a remarkable success: patients’ delusions, hallucinations and thought…