Medical Psychology and Human Behaviour

Extract

That branch of the science of psychology, which perhaps is the most important branch, Medical Psychology, has without doubt become a permanent addition to Medicine.

One Catholic psychiatrist has called this contribution towards the Art and Practice of medicine ‘the other half of medicine,’ and the medical faculty would be inclined to endorse this opinion. Most of the teaching hospitals have now a special department in charge of a psychiatrist who acts as lecturer in psychological medicine as Well as being consultant to ‘out patients’ for functional nervous disorders.

Before the war the Institute of Medical Psychology, besides teaching and training an ever increasing number of doctors who wished to specialise in this subject, gave treatment to 14,986 new patients in the twenty-one years of its existence. The number of doctors who specialise in psychological medicine is now very large, and in this war all branches of the services have special psychiatric hospitals, where service patients are given treatment. This brief summary of the activities of psychological medicine should be sufficient guarantee that the medical profession has given an ‘imprimatur’ to what was perhaps considered at one time to be the happy hunting ground for cranks, faddists, and even charletans.