Psychiatry (from the Greek. Psyche - the soul; iatreia - treatment) - the science of mental illness, their treatment and prevention.

In ancient times, mental illness was understood as the result of the influence of “supernatural forces, as an obsession with evil or good spirit.

Later, with the development of the natural philosophy of the ancients, natural ideas about the causes of diseases of the body and brain were formed.

The first shelters for the mentally ill began to appear at Christian monasteries in Byzantium (IV century), Armenia and Georgia (IV — VI centuries), countries of Islam (IX century).

In Western Europe during the Middle Ages, attitudes toward the mentally ill were determined by religious ideology. The mentally ill were accused of voluntarily union with the devil. Starting from the XIII century. They were sent to special institutions (not hospitals) to isolate the insane. There the patients were kept in handcuffs, without elementary comforts, chained and tortured, starved. It happened that the mentally ill were burned at the stake of the Inquisition under the pretext of fighting witches and heresy.

Attitudes toward the mentally ill, as being possessed by an evil spirit, persisted in Western Europe until the end of the 18th century, when the development of science experienced the powerful influence of 18th century French materialism. and the French bourgeois revolution.

The reorganization of the maintenance and treatment of the mentally ill is connected with the activities of Philippe Pinel (Pinel Philippe, 1745-1826) —the founder of social and clinical psychiatry in France. During the revolution, he was appointed chief physician at the psychiatric institutions of Bicetre and Salpetriere in Paris. The possibility of progressive transformations carried out by F. Pinel was prepared by the whole course of social and political events. Pinel first created for the mentally ill human conditions in the hospital, removed the chains from them (Fig. 141), developed the system of their treatment, attracted them to "work, defined the main directions of studying mental diseases. For the first time in history, the mentally ill were restored to their human and civil rights, and mental institutions began to turn into medical - hospitals.

The ideas of F. Pinel were developed by English psychiatrist John Conolly (Conolly, John, 1794–1866), who fought for the elimination of mechanical restraint measures for patients in psychiatric hospitals.

At the beginning of the XIX century. psychiatry began to develop as an independent natural-scientific clinical discipline. In psychiatric hospitals, and then at medical faculties of universities, training of psychiatrists began.

In the Russian Empire, the first psychiatric institution was opened in Riga in 1776. After the Zemstvo reform in 1864, the construction of well-appointed psychiatric hospitals expanded significantly. In 1835, therapeutist professors began to read a separate course in psychiatry at medical faculties of universities in Russia, which later began to be taught in special departments: in St. Petersburg (1857), Kazan (1866), Moscow (1887) and other cities of the country.

Great influence on the successful development of psychiatry from the mid-XIX century. exerted by evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin and the study of reflex, developed by the Russians: physiologists I. M. Sechenov and I. P. Pavlov.

At the same time, psychiatry, more than any other branch of medicine, has experienced the influence of idealistic currents in philosophy. This was most clearly manifested in Germany, where feudalism did not give up its position for a long time. In the German philosophy of the beginning of the XIX century. idealistic currents prevailed. In psychiatry, they manifested themselves in the views of the “psyche” school, which defined mental illness as the result of the evil will or sinfulness of a person. In the middle of the XIX century. another idealistic school of “somatic” has emerged. Believing that the soul is immortal and cannot be sick, somatics viewed mental illness as a disease of the body, that is, the material shell of the soul.

At the end of the 19th century, idealistic currents in psychiatry were revived and most widely manifested in psychoanalytic schools.

In Russia, revolutionary democrats had a great influence on the development of psychiatry, which determined the prevalence of natural science trends in this and other areas of medicine in our country.

Sergey Sergeevich Korsakov (1854–1900), one of the founders of the nosological direction in psychiatry, founded at the end of the 19th century, is one of the world's largest psychiatrists. the German psychiatrist Emil Krepelin (Kraepelin, Emil, 1856–1926), in contrast to the previously existing symptomatic direction.

S. Korsakov for the first time described a new disease - alcoholic polyneuritis with severe memory disorders (1887, doctoral dissertation "On alcoholic paralysis"), which was already during the author's lifetime. called "Korsakovsky psychosis." He was a supporter of non-obstruction of the mentally ill, developed and introduced into practice a system of bed rest and home monitoring, paid great attention to the prevention of mental illness and the organization of psychiatric care. His "course of psychiatry" (1893) is considered classic and has been reprinted many times.

A great contribution to the development of psychiatry was also made by J. Eskirol, J. Charcot and P. Jean (France), G. Models, J. Jackson (England), B. Rush (USA), V. Griesinger, E. Creapelnn ( Germany), V. M. Bekhterev, V. X. Kandinsky, P. P. Kaschenko, V. P. Serbsky, P. B. Gannushkin (Russia).