Psychiatry’s Past Can Be Psychiatry’s Future

Abstract

In the last half of the 20th century, psychiatry lost many of the conditions needed for unhindered practice. I compiled from searches of the literature the 20th century changes in the arenas of psychiatric practice and the sources of these changes. I determined how these changes are shaping 21st century health and well-being. The neglect of the severely mentally ill, first in Bedlams and now on Boulevards, reflects a wide loss of resources. Psychiatry's patients have lost a past of community-based mental health services, interdisciplinary care teams, preventive consultation with social agencies, and, with reimbursements targeted for 15-minute visits, time adequate with the physician to individualize diagnosis and treatment. With the Covid-19 and other epidemics, economic inequalities, an economic crisis, unrest over police violence, and racism, psychiatry can find in its past the resources to engage 21st century psychiatric and other problems.