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Psychiatry: A Very Short Introduction

Second Edition

Tom Burns

October 2018

ISBN: 9780198826200

152 pages
Paperback
174x111mm

In Stock

Very Short Introductions

Price: £8.99

Tom Burns explores the nature of psychiatry today, focusing on what it can and cannot do, and considering the main disorders it covers. Discussing the philosophical issues of psychiatry, he reveals psychiatry's past mistakes, before looking forward to the likely changes in its future practice with artificial intelligence and virtual reality.

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Description

Tom Burns explores the nature of psychiatry today, focusing on what it can and cannot do, and considering the main disorders it covers. Discussing the philosophical issues of psychiatry, he reveals psychiatry's past mistakes, before looking forward to the likely changes in its future practice with artificial intelligence and virtual reality.

  • Considers the nature of psychiatry today, and the future opportunities which are being opened up with the use of artificial intelligence and virtual reality
  • Offers a historical overview of psychiatry's development, including the asylum movement and the discovery of the unconscious
  • Provides a thorough examination of psychiatry's past (and present) failures and mistakes
  • Explores the conceptual and philosophical controversies around psychiatry's legitimacy
  • Distinguishes psychiatry's differences (and overlaps) with psychology and psychotherapy
  • Part of the Very Short Introductions series - over nine million copies sold worldwide

New to this edition

  • Fully updated throughout
  • Considers recent social changes in psychiatry and the issues psychiatry needs to combat today, such as the fact that women are no longer to be relied on as carers, and the problems associated with ageing populations and the challenge of dementia
  • Includes new material on scientific advances, such as Virtual Reality in both diagnosis and treatment, and artificial intelligence

About the Author(s)

Tom Burns, Emeritus Professor of Social Psychiatry, Oxford. Honorary Professor of Psychiatry, UCL.

Tom Burns trained as a psychiatrist in Scotland and London before working as a general adult consultant in Sweden and London. He became a Professor of Community Psychiatry in 1993, before becoming a Professor of Social Psychiatry at the University of Oxford in 2003. His publications include Our Necessary Shadow: The Nature and Meaning of Psychiatry (Penguin, 2014) and Outreach in Community Mental Health Care (OUP, 2017). In 2006, Tom was awarded a CBE for services to mental health.

Table of Contents

    1:What is psychiatry?
    2:Asylums and the origins of psychiatry
    3:The move into the community
    4:Psychoanalysis and psychotherapy
    5:Psychiatry under attack
    6:Open to abuse
    7:Into the 21st century
    Further reading
    Index

Reviews

"This highly readable introductory book from a respected psychiatrist addresses many of the issues that underlie the stigma still associated with mental illness. Wide ranging in its scope of topics presented in an understandable way, the author addresses the many successful developments but does not shy away from discussing some of the celebrated but ineffective blind alleys that psychiatrists have gone down in the search for cure. This book serves as an ideal foundation for the lay reader and deserves a wide audience." - Dr Michael Maier President of the Psychiatry section, Royal Society of Medicine.

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