Published 28 October 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a2262
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a2262

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The person in the patient

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

"The care of the human mind is the most noble branch of medicine" Aloysius Sieffert1

"Psychiatrist—a man who asks you a lot of expensive questions your wife asks you for nothing" Sam Bordell1

My opinion of the branch of medicine that I have given my career to, psychiatry, veers unsteadily between two extremes. At times I am carried away by the nobility of my calling, while at other times I am left wondering at the validity and usefulness of modern psychiatry. I am talking about the vast bulk of mental illness largely ignored by psychiatry but that forms the greatest burden of mental suffering in the population: depression, anxiety disorders, conversion disorders, somatoform disorders, and a variety of other similar disorders. Why are these disorders becoming more prevalent? Is our treatment effective? Is our understanding of the illnesses adequate? Surely the context influences the development of mental health problems; and . . . [Full text of this article]

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