THE SUBJECT AND TASKS OF PSYCHIATRY

Psychiatry is a medical discipline that studies diagnosis and treatment, etiology, pathogenesis and prevalence of mental diseases, as well as the organization of psychiatric care for the population.

Psychiatry is a specialty of medicine that is part of clinical medicine. In addition to the basic research methods used in clinical medicine, such as examination, palpation and auscultation, a number of techniques are used to study mental illness to identify and assess the mental state of the patient – observation and conversation with him.

In the case of mental disorders as a result of monitoring the patient can detect the originality of his actions and behavior.

In the event that the patient is disturbed by auditory or olfactory hallucinations, he can plug his ears or nose. When observed it can be noted that patients stick with the Windows, vent holes to the gas, which allegedly allowed the neighbor, broke into her apartment. This behavior may indicate the presence of olfactory hallucinations. In the case of obsessive fears, patients can make incomprehensible to others movements that are rituals. An example is the endless washing of hands with fear of pollution, stepping over cracks on the asphalt, “so that there is no trouble.”

When talking to a psychiatrist, the patient can inform him about his experiences, fears, fears, bad mood, explaining the wrong behavior, as well as to Express inadequate situations of judgment and delusional experiences.

For the correct assessment of the patient’s condition, it is important to collect information about his past life, attitude to the events, relationship with the people around him.

Typically, such collection of information identifies a painful interpretation of certain events and phenomena. In this case, it is not so much about the history as about the mental state of the patient.

An important point in the assessment of the mental state of the patient is the data of an objective history, as well as information that is obtained from close relatives of the patient and those around him.

Mental diseases, unlike somatic diseases, which are an episode in the life of the patient, last for years, and sometimes for the whole life. Such a long course of mental illness provokes a number of social problems: the relationship with the outside world, people, etc.

Personal qualities of the patient, the level of maturity of the person, as well as the formed features of the character play an important role in the evaluation of mental illness and its consequences, which is most clearly revealed in the study of clinical variants of neuroses.

Gradually (with the development and study of psychiatry) there were several independent areas: child and adolescent psychiatry, geriatric, judicial, military psychiatry, narcology, psychotherapy.