Medicalizing melancholia
Exploring profiles of psychiatric professionalization
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4003296 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Judith Misbach (University of Calgary), H J Stam (0000-0002-2659-9248, University of Calgary) |
| Year | 2006 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 41-59 |
| Publication date | 2006-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-5061 • E-ISSN: 1520-6696 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1002/jhbs.20133 |
| PMID | 16345009 |
| OpenAlex | W2055741574 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 29 |
The nineteenth century was the site of radical changes in understanding mental illness. The professionalization of psychiatry consisted primarily of the discipline's aspiration to the status of an expert medical subspecialty. While all forms of insanity were eventually reframed in medical terms, melancholia-for moral and nosological reasons-assumed a special role that made it an ideal diagnosis for conceptual reframing. Our analysis of the journal literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in North America and Germany traces several ways in which melancholia was medicalized. As the care for the insane shifted into the professional realm of physicians and medical terminology came to replace prior descriptors of mental illness, melancholia was replaced by depression. In addition, the process of delineating affective pathology assumed a distinctly medical flavor. Finally, melancholia was firmly medicalized when its boundaries blurred with neurasthenia. Differences in how ordinary affective terms became medicalized in German and North American psychiatry illustrate the importance of local historical approaches. (c) 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc
German · Insanity · Melancholia · Mental health · Mental illness · Mood · Neurasthenia · Professionalization · Psychiatry · Psychoanalysis · Psychotherapist · Social science · Sociology · Terminology · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · History · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Neurology and Historical Studies · Philosophy · Psychology
“Shattered Nerves”
Naming the Mind
Melancholia and Depression
German History 1770-1866
The Nature of Melancholy. From Aristotle to Kristeva.
The Sin in the Aetiological Concept of Johann Christian August Heinroth (1773-1843)
Psychiatry and social control in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
Psychiatry Beyond the Asylum
Manic-Depressive Illness in Children
Of Mania
Cyclothymia, a Circular Mood Disorder
On the Origin of the Clinical Standpoint in Psychiatry
Cyclothymia, a Circular Mood Disorder
Science as Cultural Practice
A few trends in modern psychiatry
A quarter century of the history of psychiatry
The evolution of the concept of medicalization in the late twentieth century
Nineteenth-Century Medical Psychology
Psychiatric Diagnosis as Reified Measurement
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,17 |
| Citation span | 2008 - 2022 (15) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |