Psychiatry got its name as a medical specialty in the early 1800s. For the first century of its existence, the field concerned itself with severely disordered individuals confined to asylums or ...

How a 1950s study of social class and mental illness in New Haven changed the way people thought about mental health.

Psychiatry, from its very inception, has been subject to raised eyebrows if not outright ridicule. Even before Freud came along with his batty theories about infantile sexuality and repressed wishes ...

A guard at the state prison hospital in Vacaville, Calif., prepares an inmate for a lobotomy in 1961. Under superintendent William Keating, a psychiatrist who was convinced that “criminality” was ...