Portal:Psychiatry

The Psychiatry Portal

Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of deleterious mental conditions. These include matters related to cognition, perceptions, mood, emotion, and behavior.

Initial psychiatric assessment of a person begins with creating a case history and conducting a mental status examination. Laboratory tests, physical examinations, and psychological tests may be conducted. On occasion, neuroimaging or neurophysiological studies are performed.

Mental disorders are diagnosed in accordance with diagnostic manuals such as the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), edited by the World Health Organization (WHO), and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). The fifth edition of the DSM (DSM-5) was published in May 2013. (Full article...)

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

Selected article

The mental status examination or mental state examination, abbreviated MSE, is an important part of the clinical assessment process in psychiatric practice. It is a structured way of observing and describing a patient's current state of mind, under the domains of appearance, attitude, behavior, mood and affect, speech, thought process, thought content, perception, cognition, insight and judgment. There are some minor variations in the subdivision of the MSE and the sequence and names of MSE domains.

The purpose of the MSE is to obtain a comprehensive cross-sectional description of the patient's mental state, which, when combined with the biographical and historical information of the psychiatric history, allows the clinician to make an accurate diagnosis and formulation, which are required for coherent treatment planning. (Full article...)

More selected articles

Selected image

Mignon Nevada as William Shakespeare's character Ophelia, circa 1910. An artistic representation of insanity leading to suicide

image credit: public domain

More selected images

WikiProjects

	WikiProject Medicine
	WikiProject Psychiatry
	WikiProject Directory

WikiProject
Neuroscience

Selected biography

Benjamin Rush (January 4, 1746 [O.S. December 24, 1745] – April 19, 1813) was a Founding Father of the United States. Rush lived in the state of Pennsylvania and was a physician, writer, educator, humanitarian, as well as the founder of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Rush signed the Declaration of Independence and attended the Continental Congress. He served as Surgeon General in the Continental army, and was blamed for criticising George Washington. Later in life, Rush became a professor of chemistry, medical theory, and clinical practice at the University of Pennsylvania.

As a leading physician, Rush had a major impact on the emerging medical profession. As an Enlightenment intellectual, he was committed to organizing all medical knowledge around explanatory theories, rather than rely on empirical methods. Rush argued that illness was the result of imbalances in the body's physical system and was caused by malfunctions in the brain. His approach prepared the way for later medical research, but Rush himself undertook none of it. He promoted public health by advocating clean environment and stressing the importance of personal and military hygiene. His study of mental disorder made him one of the founders of American psychiatry. (Full article...)

More selected biographies

General images

The following are images from various psychiatry-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Dr. Philippe Pinel at the Salpêtrière, 1795 by Tony Robert-Fleury. Pinel ordering the removal of chains from patients at the Paris Asylum for insane women. (from History of psychiatry)
Image 2Niuvanniemi Hospital in Niuva, Finland (from Psychiatric hospital)
Image 3Plan of the Bethlem Royal Hospital, an early public asylum for the mentally ill.
Image 4The Art Nouveau-styled Röykkä Hospital, formerly known as Nummela Sanatorium, in Röykkä, Finland (from Psychiatric hospital)
Image 5Danvers State Hospital, Danvers, Massachusetts, Kirkbride Complex, c. 1893 (from Psychiatric hospital)
Image 6Traverse City State Hospital in Traverse City, Michigan, U.S., in operation from 1881 to 1989 (from Psychiatric hospital)
Image 7Emil Kraepelin studied and promoted ideas of disease classification for mental disorders. (from History of psychiatry)
Image 8Republican Vilnius Psychiatric Hospital in Naujoji Vilnia, one of the largest health facilities in Lithuania, built in 1902 (from Psychiatric hospital)
Image 9Otto Loewi's work led to the identification of the first neurotransmitter, acetylcholine. (from History of psychiatry)
Image 10psychiatric medication and an ECT machine, in Berlin Museum of medical history (from History of psychiatry)
Image 11York Retreat, built in the late 18th century by William Tuke, a pioneer in moral treatment of the mentally ill (from Psychiatric hospital)
Image 12The York Retreat (c.1796) was built by William Tuke, a pioneer of moral treatment for the insane. (from History of psychiatry)
Image 13Lord Shaftesbury, a vigorous campaigner for the reform of lunacy law in England, and the Head of the Lunacy Commission for 40 years. (from History of psychiatry)
Image 14William A. F. Browne was an influential reformer of the lunatic asylum in the mid-19th century, and an advocate of the new 'science' of phrenology. (from History of psychiatry)