Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ws8qp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T14:15:08.064Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A very British kind of social psychiatry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2018

Leon Eisenberg*
Affiliation:
Harvard Medical School, Department of Social Medicine, 641 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA. e-mail: leisenbe@warren.med.harvard.edu

Extract

Social psychiatry, as represented in the work of Michael Shepherd, his pupils, and his colleagues at the Maudsley, all intellectual progeny of Sir Aubrey Lewis, is a very British kind of science. Lest this arouse your ire, implying an insult hurled at his betters in the mother country by a colonial parvenu, I hasten to add that “very British” refers to the best in your long and admirable scientific tradition in medicine: an unswerving commitment to empiricism, one which rarely moves much beyond its database; sober understatement, which makes no claim of possessing an exclusive path to salvation; sound methodology; and epistemological caution. It is aptly described by the adjective Apollonian, defined in my New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (NSOED) as “serene, rational, self-disciplined”.

Type
Review Articles Michael Shepherd Memorial Symposium
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barker, P. (1991) Regeneration. New York: Viking.Google Scholar
Black, F. L. (1975) Infectious diseases in primitive societies. Science. 187, 515518.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Black, F. L. (1992) Why did they die? Science. 258, 17391740.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brown, G. W., Monck, E. M., Carstairs, G. M., et al (1962) Influence of family life on the course of schizophrenic illness. British Journal of Preventive and Social Medicine. 1, 5568.Google Scholar
Brown, G. W., Birley, J. L. T. & Wing, J. K. (1972) Influence of family life on the course of schizophrenic disorders: a replication. British Journal of Psychiatry. 121, 241258.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clara, A. (1992) In The Psychiatrist's Chair. London: Mandarin.Google Scholar
Clausen, J. A. (1981) Stigma and mental disorder: phenomena and terminology. Psychiatry, 44, 287296.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cooper, J. E., Kendell, R. E., Guriand, B. J., et al (1972) Psychiatric Diagnosis in New York and London. Maudsley Monograph, no. 20. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Coronary Drug Project Research Group (1980) Influence of adherence to treatment and response of cholesterol on mortality in the Coronary Drug Project. New England Journal of Medicine. 303, 10381041.Google Scholar
Dunham, H. W. (1965) Community psychiatry: the newest therapeutic bandwagon. Archives of General Psychiatry, 12, 303313.Google Scholar
Elsenberg, L. (1968) The need for evaluation. American Journal of Psychiatry. 124, 122123.Google Scholar
Falloon, I. R. H., Boyd, J. L., McGill, C. W., et al (1985) Family management in the prevention of morbidity of schizophrenia: clinical outcome of a two year longitudinal study. Archives of General Psychiatry, 42, 887896.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Grob, G. N. (1994) The Mad Among Us: A History of the Care of America's Mentally III. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Gruenberg, E. M. (1967) The social breakdown syndrome: some origins. American Journal of Psychiatry, 123, 14811489.Google Scholar
Guze, S. (1989) Biological psychiatry: is there any other kind? Psychological Medicine, 19, 315323.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Haldane, J. B. S. (1956/7) Natural selection in man. Acta Genetica et Statistica Medico. 6, 321332.Google Scholar
Hewett, S., Ryan, P. & Wing, J. K. (1975) Living without the mental hospitals. Journal of Social Policy, 4, 391404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingleby, D. (1980) Critical Psychiatry: The Politics of Mental Health. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Jablensky, A., Sartorius, N., Ernberg, G., et al (1992) Schizophrenia: manifestations, incidence and course in different cultures. Psychological Medicine (monograph supplement) 20, 197.Google Scholar
Jones, M. (1968) Social Psychiatry in Practice. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Kass, E. H. (1971) Infectious disease and social change. Journal of Infectious Disease. 123, 110114.Google Scholar
Kramer, M. (1963) Some problems for international research suggested by observations on differences in first admission rates to the mental hospitals of England and Wales. In Proceedings of the Third World Congress of Psychiatry, Montreal. 1961. Vol. 3. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Kubie, L. S. (1968) Pitfalls of community psychiatry. Archives of General Psychiatry, 18, 257266.Google Scholar
Lancet (1976) Editorial. Vaccination against measles. Lancet, ii. 132134.Google Scholar
Langmuir, A. D. (1962) Medical importance of measles. American Journal of Diseases of Children, 103, 224226.Google Scholar
Leff, J. P., Kuipers, L., Berkowitz, R., et al (1995) A controlled trial of intervention in the families of schizophrenic patients: a two year follow-up. British Journal of Psychiatry 146, 594600.Google Scholar
Lemert, E. (1951) Social Pathology. New York: McGraw Hill.Google Scholar
Lewis, A. (1959) The impact of psychotropic drugs on the structure, function and future of psychiatric services: (a) in the hospitals. In Neuropsychophormocology, vol. I (eds Bradley, P. B., Deniker, P. & Radouco-Thomas, C.), p. 207. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Lewis, A. (1962) Ebb and flow in social psychiatry. Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 35, 6283.Google Scholar
McKeown, T. (1976) The Rote of Medicine: Dream, Mirage or Nemesis? London: Nuffield Hospitals Trust.Google Scholar
Neel, J. V. (1969) Current concepts of the genetic basis of diabetes mellitus and the biological significance of the diabetic predisposition. In Diabetes International Congress Series. Vol. 72S. p. 68. Amsterdam: Excerpta Medica Foundation.Google Scholar
Odegaard, O. (1964) Pattern of discharge from Norwegian psychiatric hospitals before and after the introduction of psychotropic drugs. American Journal of Psychiatry 120, 772778.Google Scholar
Regier, D. A., Goldberg, I. D. & Taube, C. A. (1975) The de facto US mental health service system: a public health perspective. Archives of General Psychiatry, 35, 685693.Google Scholar
Rosen, G. (1947) What is social medicine? Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 21, 674733.Google Scholar
Russell, G. (1989) Foreword to The Scope of Epidemiological Psychiatry (eds Williams, P., Wilkinson, G. & Rawnsley, K.). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ryan, P. & Wing, J. K. (1979) Patterns of residential care. In Alternative Patterns of Residential Care for Discharged Psychiatric Patients (ed. Olsen, R.), pp. 77110. London: BASW Google Scholar
Ryle, J. (1943) Social medicine: its meaning and its scope. British Medical Journal, ii. 633–436.Google Scholar
Sartorius, N., Jablensky, A., Korten, A., et al (1986) Early manifestations and first contact incidence of schizophrenia in different cultures. Psychological Medicine, 16, 909928.Google Scholar
Sartorius, N., Kelber, C. T., Cooper, J. E., et al (1993) Progress toward achieving a common language in psychiatry. Archives of General Psychiatry, 50, 115124.Google Scholar
Shepherd, M. (1957a) An English view of American psychiatry. American Journal of Psychiatry, 114, 417420.Google Scholar
Shepherd, M. (1957b) A Study of the Major Psychoses in an English County. Maudsley Monograph No. 3. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Shepherd, M. (1990) From social medicine to social psychiatry: the achievement of Sir Aubrey Lewis. Psychological Mediane, 10, 211218.Google Scholar
Shepherd, M. Goodman, N. & Watt, D. C. (1961) The application of hospital statistics in the evaluation of pharmacotherapy in a psychiatric population. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 2, 1119.Google Scholar
Shepherd, M., Cooper, B., Brown, A. C., et al (1966) Psychiatric illness in General Practice. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Shepherd, M., Brooke, E. M., Cooper, J. E., et al (1968) An experimental approach to psychiatric diagnosis. Acta Psychiatrica Scondinavica, suppl. 201.Google Scholar
Tarrier, N., Barrowclough, C., Porceddu, K., et al (1994) The Salford family intervention project: relapse rates of schizophrenia at five and eight years. British Journal of Psychiatry, 165, 829832.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tognoni, G., Bellantuono, C. & Lader, M. (eds) (1981) Epidemiologic Impact of Psychotropic Drugs. Amsterdam, Elsevier/North-Holland Biomedical Press.Google Scholar
Ustun, T. B. & Sartorius, N. (1995) Mental Illness in General Health Core: An International Study. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Vaughn, C. E. & Left, J. P. (1976) The influence of family and social factors on the course of schizophrenic illness. British Journal of Psychiatry, 129, 125137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walsh, J. A. (1983) Strategies for control of disease in the third world. IV: Measles. Review of Infectious Diseases, 5, 330340.Google Scholar
Wing, J. K. (1980) Innovations in social psychiatry. Psychological Medicine, 10, 219230.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wing, J. K. Bennett, D. H. & Denham, J. (1964) The Industrial Rehabilitation of Long-Stay Schizophrenic Patients. MRC Memo. No. 42. London: HMSO Google Scholar
Wing, J. K. & Brown, G. W. (1970) institutionalism and Schizophrenia. London: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wing, J. K. & Freudenberg, R. K. (1971) The response of severely ill chronic schizophrenic patients to social stimulation. American Journal of Psychiatry, 118, 311.Google Scholar
World Health Organization (1975) Schizophrenia: A Multinational Study. Public Health Papers. No. 63. Geneva: WHO.Google Scholar
World Health Organization (1979) Schizophrenia: An International Follow Up Study. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
World Health Organization (1995) The World Health Report 1995: Bridging the Gaps. Report of the Director General. Geneva: WHO.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.