Lama Muhammad
University of New Mexico, USA
Title: Revolution in psychiatry: Butterfly effect; beyond psychiatry and against stigma
Biography
Biography: Lama Muhammad
Abstract
It was surprising to me while teaching medical students and residents that many of them did not know the meaning of psychiatry! All around the world we are still fighting the stigma in one way or another! It is the time of revolution in psychiatry. The term "psychiatry" was first coined by the German physician "Johann Reil" in 1808 and literally means the 'medical treatment of the soul’, (psych- "soul" or butterfly from Ancient Greek), (iatry "medical treatment" from Greek). Why butterfly? To answer this question maybe we should answer this one: Why we can't put a butterfly in a cage? Psychiatry is different by the fact that we need the whole story and we all know that telling the whole truth is the most difficult of all arts. Science cannot know the whole story, for which we need to supplement it with philosophical reason and personal experience, this is the butterfly (soul) of psychiatry and will speak about that more. It is good to think of mental illness in terms of: Target condition versus current condition, the illness is the gap between the two; to do so, (1) We need to learn about psychiatry as field in medicine, (2) Fight stigma!, (3) Emotional hygiene strategies and, (4) First aid in psychiatry. And will cover all above during the oral presentation.