Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental health hospitals or behavioral health hospitals, are hospitals or wards specializing in the treatment of severe mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, dissociative identity disorder, major depressive disorder and many others. Psychiatric hospitals vary widely in their size and grading. Some hospitals may specialize only in short-term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients. Others may specialize in the temporary or permanent confinement of patients who need routine assistance, treatment, or a specialized and controlled environment due to a psychiatric disorder. Patients often choose voluntary commitment, but those whom psychiatrists believe to pose significant danger to themselves or others may be subject to involuntary commitment and involuntary treatment. Psychiatric hospitals may also be called psychiatric wards/units when they are a subunit of a regular hospital.
Thomas Stephen Szasz was a Hungarian-American academic and psychiatrist. He served for most of his career as professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York. A distinguished lifetime fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a life member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, he was best known as a social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, as what he saw as the social control aims of medicine in modern society, as well as scientism.
Delusional disorder is a mental illness in which a person has delusions, but with no accompanying prominent hallucinations, thought disorder, mood disorder, or significant flattening of affect. Delusions are a specific symptom of psychosis. Delusions can be bizarre or non-bizarre in content; non-bizarre delusions are fixed false beliefs that involve situations that could occur in real life, such as being harmed or poisoned. Apart from their delusion or delusions, people with delusional disorder may continue to socialize and function in a normal manner and their behavior does not necessarily generally seem odd. However, the preoccupation with delusional ideas can be disruptive to their overall lives.
Claudio Benjamín Naranjo Cohen was a Chilean-born psychiatrist who is considered a pioneer in integrating psychotherapy and the spiritual traditions. He was one of the three successors named by Fritz Perls, a principal developer of Enneagram of Personality theories and a founder of the Seekers After Truth Institute. He was also an elder statesman of the US and global human potential movement and the spiritual renaissance of the late 20th century. Naranjo authored several books.
Carol Gilligan is an American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist, best known for her work on ethical community and ethical relationships.
Aaron Temkin Beck was an American psychiatrist who was a professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. He is regarded as the father of cognitive therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). His pioneering methods are widely used in the treatment of clinical depression and various anxiety disorders. Beck also developed self-report measures for depression and anxiety, notably the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), which became one of the most widely used instruments for measuring the severity of depression. In 1994 he and his daughter, psychologist Judith S. Beck, founded the nonprofit Beck Institute for Cognitive Behavior Therapy, which provides CBT treatment and training, as well as research. Beck served as President Emeritus of the organization up until his death.
Peter Roger Breggin is an American psychiatrist and critic of shock treatment and psychiatric medication and COVID-19 response. In his books, he advocates replacing psychiatry's use of drugs and electroconvulsive therapy with psychotherapy, education, empathy, love, and broader human services.
Irvin David Yalom is an American existential psychiatrist who is emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, as well as author of both fiction and nonfiction.
Anthony Stevens is a Jungian analyst, psychiatrist and prolific writer of books and articles on psychotherapy, evolutionary psychiatry and the scientific implications of Jung's theory of archetypes. A graduate of Oxford University, where he studied under Carolus Oldfield in the Department of Psychology in the 1950s, Stevens has two degrees in psychology in addition to a research doctorate (MD); during the 1950s Stevens also studied under Oldfield in the Department of Psychology at Reading. He is a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and a senior member of the Independent Group of Analytical Psychologists.
John Allan Hobson was an American psychiatrist and dream researcher. He was known for his research on rapid eye movement sleep. He was Professor of Psychiatry, Emeritus, Harvard Medical School, and Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
The Austen Riggs Center is a psychiatric treatment facility in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It was founded by Austen Fox Riggs in 1913 as the Stockbridge Institute for the Study and Treatment of Psychoneuroses before being renamed in honor of Austen Riggs on July 21, 1919.
Elwyn James Anthony was a British psychoanalyst and was best known for his work on resilience and invulnerability risk in children, particularly those whose parents had serious mental illnesses. He was one of two founders, along with S. H. Foulkes, of the field of group psychotherapy. A prolific writer, he authored 320 research articles and 18 books, many of which were translated into multiple languages. James Anthony was a training psychoanalyst who studied in London where he began a distinguished career as a child psychotherapist and psychiatrist. He studied child development under Jean Piaget and, after leaving the Maudsley Hospital, occupied the Ittleson Chair of Child Psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis. He later became Director of Psychotherapy at Chestnut Lodge, where he developed a program of group psychotherapy for adolescent inpatients.
Alan Abraham Stone was an American psychiatrist who was the Touroff-Glueck Professor of Law and Psychiatry Emeritus at Harvard Law School. His writing and teaching has focused on professional medical ethics, issues at the intersection of law and psychiatry, and the topic of violence in both law and in psychiatry. Stone served as president of the American Psychiatric Association. He also served for a number of years as the film critic for the Boston Review.
Paul Rodney McHugh is an American psychiatrist, researcher, and educator. He is currently the University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the author, co-author, or editor of seven books in his field.
Lost Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them is a 2000 book by the psychologist James Garbarino, in which the author details the epidemic of violent male youths in the United States.
Peter Lehmann, D. Phil. h.c., is an author, social scientist, publisher, and an independent freelance activist in humanistic anti-psychiatry, living in Berlin, Germany.
Barbara J. Justice-Muhammad is an American forensic and clinical psychiatrist as well as a surgical oncologist. The first African-American woman to be trained in general surgery at Columbia University Medical Center. She has worked at Harlem Hospital, Abundant Life Clinic and at Memorial Sloane Kettering sites in New York City. She is well known for her long-running New York radio show, Medical View and You, and was honored in 1996 when Mayor David Dinkins proclaimed a citywide Barbara Justice Day for her contribution to the health of the community.
Daniel A. Geller is an Australian American pediatrician and psychiatrist who specializes in the treatment of pediatric obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). Geller is triple board certified in Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, and is director of the Pediatric OCD Program at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Eric M. Plakun is an American psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, researcher and forensic psychiatrist. He is the current medical director/CEO at the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Plakun's primary interests include the mental health advocacy, full implementation of the mental health parity law, access-to-care issues, and reducing health disparities; the value of and evidence base for psychosocial treatments and the diagnosis, treatment, longitudinal course and outcome of patients with borderline personality disorder and treatment resistant disorders. Plakun has been widely published and quoted in the media on psychotherapy and psychiatry, including in The New York Times and The Globe and Mail. He has appeared in the media to discuss his psychiatric work on WAMC, the Albany, New York, affiliate of NPR. and on CBS 60 Minutes. His psychiatric research has been widely cited.
Bandy Xenobia Lee is an American psychiatrist whose scholarly work includes the writing of a comprehensive textbook on violence. She is a specialist in public health approaches to violence prevention who consulted with the World Health Organization and initiated reforms at New York's Rikers Island Correctional Facility. She helped draft the United Nations chapter on "Violence Against Children," leads a project group for the World Health Organization's Violence Prevention Alliance, and has contributed to prison reform in the United States and around the world. She taught at Yale School of Medicine and Yale Law School from 2003 through 2020.
