POSSIBILITIES FOR A PREVENTIVE PSYCHIATRY

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
WHEN A SPEAKER is invited to address a medical society, it may safely be assumed that its members (or at least the less jaundiced among them) anticipate enlightenment or entertainment or, mirabile dictu, both. How often these expectations are rewarded is quite another matter, upon which each of us will hold his own opinion. But it would seem to require some word of justification when a speaker arrives, as I do this evening, not to offer help but to seek it. This is all the more unusual in view of the frequency with which psychiatrists are asked to advise pediatricians, and the relative rarity of the converse. A curious state of affairs, indeed, unless one were to assume that the psychiatrist knows all that the pediatrician does, plus something more—or that what the pediatrician knows is of no consequence for the psychiatrist. No one would seriously maintain the former statement, and the latter is no less patently absurd. How this relationship between the two specialties has come to be is an interesting historical question, but not our present concern. However, its existence is to the detriment of both the psychiatrist and the pediatrician. It is with the hope that you will enter the lists in the struggle for the advancement of psychiatric knowledge that I propose to review what is known of preventive psychiatry. You will discern that a substantial part of it is pediatrics, has been contributed by pediatricians along with other specialists, and very much concerns pediatric practice.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: