Doctors – paradoxes and possibilities

In most countries doctors are involved in identifying those who should be ‘treated’ in hospitals from those who should be punished.

Australas Med J. 2012; 5(5): 284–289.

Published online 2012 May 31

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3395282/ 

 Exhibiting behaviour that is strange or atypical is considered frightening, inconvenient or embarrassing and society has looked to doctors to protect it from ‘deviant’ and ‘dangerous’ individuals. Primitive cultures turned to witch doctors or shamans to apply magic, herbal mixtures, or folk medicine to rid deranged persons of evil spirits or manage their ‘unacceptable’ behavior.²² In the early part of the twentieth century, girls who gave birth out of wedlock in the UK and elsewhere were sometimes committed to psychiatric institutions because of what was classified by psychiatrists as deviant behaviour.²³

 

No longer restricted to the treatment of psychosis, psychiatrists sought to treat clients with a broader range of problems. Between 1917 and 1970 the number of psychiatrists practicing outside psychiatric institutions swelled. The term “stress” took on an increasingly broad biopsychosocial meaning, and was now linked to mental disorders.²⁴ Outpatient treatment was gradually expanded or introduced in some countries. Lobotomies, insulin shock therapy, electro convulsive therapy, and the neuroleptics came in to use by the middle of the last century.

A significant trend in this role is for doctors to be involved in the legal defence of ‘normal’ individuals exhibiting deviant behaviours by diagnosing temporary mental or physical aberrations.