About Psychiatry

This chapter reviews definitions of mental illness and explores the impact that the mental illness of a family member can have on the other members of the family. The role of the psychiatrist and psychiatrist-patient relationships are discussed. The author elaborates on how a mental disorder can condition the behaviour of a person and their understanding both of their actions and the consequences that derive from them, with a brief explanation of how the Italian legal system deals with persons who have committed a crime while being of unsound mind. The chapter includes a review of how conditions have changed for these offenders after the passing of Law 180/833 that laid the foundations for the closure of asylums. In this chapter the author also raises and discusses six open issues: creativity as treatment and an antidote against institutionalization; the patient/psychiatrist relationship; violence in psychiatric patients and in the man in the street; substance abuse and violence; diagnosis: a support for the therapy or simply a label?; treatment for foreigners.