Tag: psychiatry

Everyday Knowledge, Science, and Psychiatric Committals during Germany’s Age of Extremes

~ Stefanie Coché

Hans A. was 72 years old and in good shape when he was admitted to the Eglfing-Haar Mental Institution in March 1944.1 This Bavarian asylum was notorious at the time for its high mortality rate, and Hans A. died there within two months without having shown any signs of serious illness prior to his admission. How and why did he get there? The answers to these questions open up new insights about the relationship among distinct types of knowledge involved in psychiatric committals.

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Mental Disorders, Collective Observation, and the International Classification of Diseases

~ David Robertson

Over four decades ago, the distinguished epidemiological psychiatrist Norman Sartorius wrote, “the history of psychiatric classification is in fact a history of psychiatry.”1 During the 1960s and 1970s, Sartorius had been at the center of research by the World Health Organization (WHO) on the international classification and prevalence of mental disorders. During that era, the organization significantly transformed its classificatory manual, the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD), releasing the ICD–9 in 1977. The ICD is the standard international manual for recording mortality and morbidity data for insurance and epidemiological purposes. WHO is currently in the final stages of completing its latest update to the text, ICD–11.

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