Psychiatry | The Monthly

Current Issue Modern madness

DSM-5 and the mental illness make-over

By Nick Haslam

Over the past century psychiatry has described conditions that would have once been medicalised, moralised, criminalised or perhaps dismissed as harmless eccentricity. The concept of “mental disorder” now contains a centrifugal assortment of ills that number in the hundreds. This expansion has been accompanied by equally significant cultural change. Increasingly, we view suffering

Choosing the Right Path for Adolescent Mental Health

Minds at Risk

By Lisa Pryor

This included $419.7 million over five years for the expansion of two services for young people championed by Melbourne psychiatrist Professor Patrick McGorry. The number of Headspace centres is set to triple to 90. These centres focus on young people aged 12 to 25 with a range of mild to moderate mental health concerns. The rest of the money will go towards a service – pioneered by McGorry

Hans Keilson’s 'The Death of the Adversary' and 'Comedy in a Minor Key'

Case Histories

By Inga Clendinnen

Hans Keilson, a retired psychiatrist of German birth who lives in Amsterdam, was four months away from his one-hundred-and-first birthday when, in August 2010, the New York Times critic Francine Prose pointed her magic pen and declared his two long-ago novels, Comedy in a Minor Key (1947) and The Death of the Adversary (1959), to be “masterpieces” and Keilson himself “a genius”. The centenarian – from interviews a man of engag

Only Itself to Blame: The Church of Scientology

By Malcolm Knox

The Surry Hills premises were Spartan and recently opened. Scientology’s central Sydney church, in Castlereagh St, is closed for the addition of two floors and a glass-fronted tower topped with the church’s radiant cross. The development application was approved by the City of Sydney Council despite objections from residents and local interests concerned