Leaving Psychiatry. J. R. Ó’Braonáin. M.D.

So you go to a psychiatrist. You may think psychiatry is science, medicine art, indeed all three. You may believe, as they do, that the psychiatrist has some privileged knowledge about the mind, who you are and what ails you. You may think that their invocations to genetics and neurochemistry are based upon facts, and their diagnoses are according to the truth of the world, the truth «out there» as much as in you. You may be tempted to believe that the psychiatrist is as indispensable to the broken mind as an orthopedist is to a broken bone, the two categories built on the same ontological ground. What if all this was a faith built on social practice and accidents of history, a castle built on sand? What if the world does not need psychiatry, and it offers more harm than good? This is a journey of one doctors journey into, and out of, psychiatry.