Textbook of Psychiatry/History of Psychiatry
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Timeline in Psychiatry, with special reference to India
1550 BC The Ebers papyrus, one of the most important medical papyri of ancient Egypt, briefly mentioned clinical depression.
4th century BC Hippocrates theorized that physiological abnormalities may be the root of mental disorders.
4th century BC Plato (427-347 BC) argued that there were two types of mental illness: "divinely inspired" mental illness that gave the person prophetic powers, and a second type that was caused by a physical disease.
3rd century BC Aristotle (384-322 BC), who studied under Plato, abandoned the divinely-caused mental illness theory, and proposed instead that all mental illnesses were caused by physical problems.
280 BC Greek physician and philosopher Herophilus studies the nervous system and distinguishes between sensory nerves and motor nerves.
250 BC Greek anatomist Erasistratus studies the brain and distinguishes between the cerebrum and cerebellum.
705 The first psychiatric hospital was built in Baghdad.
11th century Persian physician Avicenna recognized 'physiological psychology' in the treatment of illnesses involving emotions, and developed a system for associating changes in the pulse rate with inner feelings.
13th century Bethlem Royal Hospital in London, one of the famous oldest psychiatric hospitals, was set up.
1590 Scholastic philosopher Rudolph Goclenius used the term psychology. Though often regarded as the "origin" of the term, there is conclusive evidence that it was used at least six decades earlier by Marko Maruliæ.
1656 Louis XIV of France created a public system of hospitals for those suffering from mental disorders.
1672 In English physician Thomas Willis' anatomical treatise "De Anima Brutorum", psychology was described in terms of brain function.
1745 The first asylum of India was established in 1745 in Mumbai.
1758 English physician William Battie wrote the Treatise on Madness which called for treatments to be utilized in asylums.
1784 The second asylum of India was established in 1784 in Kolkata.
1794 Institute of Mental Health, Chennai, India (initially named as Dalton Mental Asylum) came into being.
1808 Dr. Johann Christian Reil, German physician, anatomist, physiologist and psychiatrist, coined the term 'Psychiatry'.
1816 French physician Dr. Rene Laennec invented the Stethoscope.
1821 The element of Lithium was first isolated from Lithium Oxide and described by William Thomas Brande, an English chemist.
1858 The enactment of the Indian Lunatic Asylum Act, took place.
1893 Dr. Emil Kraeplin defined "Dementia Praecox", currently Schizophrenia.
1895 German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered medical use of X- rays in medical imaging and was conferred the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901.
1856 May 6 - Sigmund freud was born in Freiburg, a small town in Moravia, which is now part of the Czech Republic. When Freud was four years old, his father moved the family to Vienna, where Freud spent most of his life. Freud died in London, in 1939.
1899 Dr. Sigmund Freud published 'The interpretation of dreams'.
1901 Dr. Alois Alzheimer, German psychiatrist and neuropathologist, identified the first case of what later became known as Alzheimer's disease.
1901 Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (27 March 1845 – 10 February 1923), a German Physicist was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, for the discovery of X-rays or Röntgen Rays in 1895.
1901 Austrian biologist and physician, Dr. Karl Landsteiner discovered the existence of different human blood types and in 1930, he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
1905 French Psychologists Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon created the Binet-Simon scale to assess intellectual ability, marking the start for standardized psychological testing.
1906 Dr. Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, Russian physiologist, psychologist, and physician, published first Conditioning studies.
1908 The word schizophrenia was coined by Dr. Paul Eugen Bleuler, Swiss psychiatrist.
1918 17th May - Ranchi European Lunatic Asylum was established in Kanke (Jharkhand), later renamed as European Mental Hospital in 1922, later became widely known as Central Institute of Psychiatry (CIP), a pioneering institute of national importance.
1928 Aug 23 - The 'Indian Association for Mental Hygiene' came into being at Simla, with Lt. Col. Owen Berkeley – Hill, Superintendent of the then European Lunatic Asylum, Ranchi (now known as Central Institute of Psychiatry) elected as its first President.
1929 Dr. Hans Berger, German neuropsychiatrist, discovered human electroencephalography.
1934 Dr. Manfred Joshua Sakel, Polish neurophysiologist and psychiatrist, introduced insulin shock therapy; a precursor to ECT.
1935 The Indian division of the royal Medico- Psychological Association was formed due to the efforts of Dr. Banarasi Das.
1936 Otto Loewi, Austrian-German-American pharmacologist, won the 1936 Nobel Prize in Medicine, which he shared with Sir Henry Dale, for his discovery of Acetylcholine, the first neurotransmitter to be described.
1936 The first EEG laboratory opened at Massachusetts General Hospital.
1937 Dr. Ugo Cerletti, Italian neurologist and Dr. Lucio Bini, Italian psychiatrist, discovered Electroconvulsive Therapy.
1947 Jan 7 - The Indian Psychiatric Society was inaugurated at Delhi, mainly by the efforts of Dr. Nagendra Nath De, Major R. B. Davis & Brigadier T. A. Munro.
1948 Lithium carbonate's ability to stabilize mood highs and lows in bipolar disorder was demonstrated.
1949 Dr. Antonio Egaz Moniz, neurologist at the Lisbon Medical School won Nobel prize for his work on psychosurgery / lobotomy.
1949 World Health Organization (WHO) published the sixth revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases (ICD) which included a section on mental disorders for the first time.
1952 The first published clinical trial of Chlorpromazine was conducted at Ste. Anne Hôspital in Paris.
1952 The APA published the first Diagnostical and Statistical Manual for MentalDisorders.
1954 On the recommendation of Bhore committee (in 1946), All India Institute of Mental Health was set up, which became the National Institute of Mental Health And NeuroSciences (NIMHANS) in 1974 at Bangalore.
1960 The first benzodiazepine, Librium, was introduced, marking the rise of psychopharmacology.
1961 World Psychiatric Association (WPA) formally founded.
1963 United States president John F. Kennedy introduced legislation delegating the National Institute of Mental Health to administer Community Mental Health Centers for those being discharged from state psychiatric hospitals.
1970 FDA approved Lithium for acute mania.
1972 Psychologist David Rosenhan published the Rosenhan experiment, a study challenging the validity of psychiatric diagnoses.
1974 27th December, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) was formed at Bangalore, India.
1977 The ICD-9 was published by the WHO.
1977 July 3 - First MRI study was performed on a human.
1979 Sir Godfrey Hounsfield and Dr. Allan McLeod Cormack was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for inventing CAT Scan.
1980 494 pages long DSM-III, listing 265 diagnostic categories was published.
1982 National Mental Health Programme (NMHP) was launched in India.
1987 DSM-III-R was published as a revision of DSM-III, with categories renamed and reorganized, and significant changes in criteria made. It contained 292 diagnoses and was 567 pages long.
1987 Indian Mental Health Act was drafted by the parliament but it came into effect in all the states and union territories of India in April 1993. This act replaced the Indian Lunacy act of 1912, which had earlier replaced the Indian Lunatic Asylum act of 1858.
1988 The first selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant, 'Prozac', was released and quickly became most prescribed.
1988 US President George Bush declared 1990s as "The decade of the brain".
1991 The United Nations adopted the 'Principles for the Protection of Persons with Mental Illness and the Improvement of Mental Health Care', which established minimum human rights standards of practice in the mental health field.
1994 DSM-IV was published, listing 297 disorders in 886 pages.
1994 November 14, NIMHANS was declared a Deemed University by the University Grants Commission of India, with academic autonomy.
2000 A "Text Revision" of the DSM-IV, known as the DSM-IV-TR, was published.
2000 The No Free Lunch organization was founded by Dr. Bob Goodman, an internist from New York.
2008 May 3 - The 'Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities', an international human rights instrument of the United Nations intended to protect the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities, including those with psychosocial disabilities, came into force.
2008 Oct 4 US President George Herbert Walker Bush signed into law, what has for decades been known as the Mental Health Parity legislation, thus enabling all psychiatric conditions to be considered no different than any other medical or surgical illness.
2012 May - Anticipated publication of DSM-V.
