Psychiatry is the area of medicine concerned with the diagnosis, treatment, and study of disordered behavior. After completion
of medical training physicians generally take a three-year residency in
psychiatry to become qualified
psychiatrists. Because psychiatry is an area of medicine, psychiatrists tend to view and conceptualize disordered behavior as types of mental illness. Within psychiatry there are a number of divergent schools and theoretical viewpoints, ranging from those emphasizing the biological and genetic factors in behavioral disorders to those emphasizing psychological or social factors. Consequently, particular treatment approaches vary with the orientation of the individual psychiatrist. Although some psychiatrists make use of any or all types of treatments as appropriate, some biologically oriented psychiatrists favor somatic therapies, such as drug treatment or electric shock therapy, whereas other psychiatrists may emphasize the various approaches of psychotherapy, such as psychoanalysis.
The roots of psychiatry are as old as those of medicine. Considerable attention to mental and emotional phenomena was given, for instance, in ancient Chinese and Greek medicine. Modern psychiatry became an autonomous medical specialty in the early 19th century; Benjamin Rush and his Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind (1812) were highly influential in the United States. The forerunner of the American Journal of Psychiatry, the American Journal of Insanity began publication in 1844. By the mid-1990s there were more than 36,000 psychiatrists practicing in the United States. A historical overview of treatment techniques is given in psychopathology.
Psychiatry from its beginnings has dominated the field of disordered behavior, but in more recent times other professions, such as clinical psychology, social work, and nursing, have increasingly participated.