• Re-Imagining Psychiatry
  • Zahra Mamizadeh,1,*
    1. Farzanegan 1 highschool


  • Introduction: Throughout history, psychiatry/psychology has remained primitive compared to other fields of medicine despite many findings and breakthroughs. The complexity and imperceptible vulnerability of the human mind, has lead to misunderstandings that have harmed many patients and resulted in many failed attempts at diagnosis and treatment. Today, the field is a hit-and-miss when it comes to treatments, as many methods are seldom efficient. The treatment centers across the globe have, thus, become untrustworthy for many patients.
  • Methods: I conducted 2 main surveys on how in-patient treatment (hospitalization) and out-patient treatment (medication use) affected people. on top of analyzing the results, I analyzed conversations between those negatively affected by the field to see the parts where the field fails to help others.
  • Results: Taking a look at data concerning the efficiency of psychiatric treatment, we can see that the field has a lower success rate than other medical fields. In a small survey I conducted among 34 people, 32.3 percent reported that psychiatric medication was ineffective for them while 29.4 percent reported that medication use actually made their mental problems worse. In another poll that 21 people participated in, 47.6 percent described their experience in a mental health facility (in-patient treatment) as "traumatizing", while 38 percent reported that it was "unhelpful".
  • Conclusion: The field needs to be re-imagined. The summarization of human struggle to chemical misinteractions that just need a chemical rebound is the fault in the system as many methods based on such assumptions have failed over and over again. we can turn psychiatry into a flourishing field by taking the steps required to re-verify medications and re-build mental health institutions. fixing the potholes of this road, will make it a more efficient and more consistent field.
  • Keywords: psychiatry , medication , survey