Psychiatry of the family physician--historical highlights
Boschung, U.
Therapeutische Umschau. Revue Therapeutique 54(7): 369-371
1997
ISSN/ISBN: 0040-5930 PMID: 9333983 Document Number: 481967
For centuries the general practitioner assumed, among other functions, that of the alienist insofar as mental disorders were regarded as accessible to treatment at all. After 1800 "psychiatry" developed as a medical specialty essentially based on the growing number of psychiatric hospitals. Thus, the general practitioner was left with the treatment of less severe mental disturbances like neuroses and with the selection of patients to be treated by the specialists. The introduction of psychotropic drugs in the 1950s opened new possibilities in the field of out-patient psychiatry.