Does A psychiatry exist? The public’s perception and image of psychiatry

Abstract

How does psychiatry appear in the eyes of the community? Isn’t asking a psychiatrist to answer this question like asking a poacher to become a gamekeeper ? However, the author has accepted the challenge as a psychiatrist who has witnessed, and in part contributed to the changes in German psychiatry from the time of custodial psychiatry, and as someone who has worked for a considerable time in journalism too. One would assume that the significant changes public mental health care in Germany has undergone in the last few decades, have had a positive impact on public opinion. But this is not necessarily so: the community struggles to form a positive image of psychiatry which, for that matter, does not come across as a cohesive and unambiguous discipline. The article also asks the question of how people perceive the fact that in Germany a completely separate system of psychosomatic-psychotherapeutic care has emerged alongside psychiatry. Moreover, one fifth of hospital beds in psychiatry wards are occupied by patients admitted to judicial psychiatric hospitals. What impact does this have on the community’s image of psychiatry? The author then examines the current fragmentation present in ambulatory clinical care characterized by a predominance of psychotherapists who usually don’t treat severely ill patients. Lastly, he finishes off by drawing up a type of chart that ranks prejudices towards mental illness in the public’s opinion, showing that schizophrenic psychosis heads the list whilst “burnout” is the least stigmatized.