"Psychiatry - The Real Definition"

                          Psychiatry is defined as the study and treatment of abnormal mental problems. This is just a definition of  the textbook and for academic interest. Do we understand the real meaning of the word is still an unsolved  mystery. 

                        When  Johann christian reil coined the word psychiatry in 1808 and defined it as the healing of human mind he would have thought that he has unsolved many unanswered questions regarding human psyche in one word.Today even after 200 hundred years of scientific growth we find ourselves  lagging behind in the knowledge about psychiatry. When a person gets a chest pain he rushes to the best cardiologist when he gets fever he searches a physician or when his wife gets a  labor pain he runs to a ogcian but sadly even today when people get depressed stressed out or even when they have some mental problems they never visit a psychiatrist. Rather they prefer a priest or temple or church or some local black magicians for help and end up in deep trouble. 

The social stigma and cultural  boundaries have always prevented people from consulting a psychiatrist. People should break out of these unseen chains  to understand the large perspective of human mind. People even today are proud to say they are a diabetic or hypertensive or asthmatic but never a mentally disturbed. 

When I joined my post-graduation in MD psychiatry few of my co-doctors and medical professionals questioned me why I preferred this field over the highly fancied surgery and related fields.I just smiled at their ignorance. I can tell confidently that psychiatry is the only field where we can treat humanbeings without any scissors blades and costly investigations. Psychiatry is the only medical field were we treat people who are sadly not aware of their abnormal behavior and psychiatrist is the only doctor who treats the part of human body that is hidden within itself the mind.Psychiatry is nothing but understanding the human mind regarding the person’s personality and emotional behavior in relation to the environment in which he is living.

This brings us back to the same old question what is psychiatry. A person developing abnormal mental problems is mostly a person who lacks parental and social support. So It goes without saying that understanding a human mind starts long before the birth of the child when he his swimming happily in his mother’s womb.To make it more clear a mother is the first psychiatrist of the child , father is the psychiatrist who teaches discipline the school teacher is the psychiatrist who gives knowledge and so on.
 

Hence the development of a normal psyche rather depends on the surrounding in which he develops and not the person himself.So It clearly defines the role every one of us to have in understanding each others emotions and problems to have confidence and to understand psychiatry. In my next blog I will be giving a outline of what are normal and abnormal human psychic behavior .

Dr. Bevinsathya.