Andrew Scull
A historian of the social history of medicine, Andrew Scull focuses on the history of psychiatry and the social construction of mental illness. He has authored multiple critical works on the history of psychiatry, examining how psychiatric institutions, practices, and categories have been shaped by social, cultural, and economic forces.
Timeline (last 90 days)
Scull argues that CBT's victory over psychoanalysis relied not only on therapeutic efficacy, but more on the institutional advantages of research training, grant applications, and the verifiability of evidence.
As asylums expanded rapidly in scale at the end of the 19th century and their populations exceeded designed capacity, they gradually evolved into what Scull called museum-like disease warehouses.
In the United States today, the three largest inpatient psychiatric treatment facilities are in fact three prisons: Los Angeles County Jail, Chicago's Cook County Jail, and New York's Rikers Island.
Asylums were originally established out of a great optimism, with reformers hoping to provide a therapeutic environment for the mentally ill.
Andrew Scull argues that the primary cause of the systematic abandonment of people with serious mental illness lies in public policy, rather than in psychiatry itself.
People with serious mental illness have an average life expectancy 15 to 25 years shorter than the general population, and this gap continues to widen.
Andrew Scull described community care as a shell game with no pea, arguing that the promised community facilities were never truly established.
Around 1930, there were only about 300 psychoanalysts in all of North America, who, at the classic psychoanalytic intensity of five hours per week, could treat at most a few thousand patients, while hospitals held hundreds of thousands of patients.
Scull argues that diagnostic creep is also driven by patients and the public themselves, and that tightening diagnostic criteria often meets with strong resistance
Andrew Scull is a historian of psychiatry who discussed the surge in autism diagnoses on Lex Fridman's podcast
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All Facts (15)
In psychiatric hospitals of the 1950s and 1960s, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) was nominally a treatment, but was widely used as a tool for discipline and patient control.
60%UnverifiedScull argues that CBT's victory over psychoanalysis relied not only on therapeutic efficacy, but more on the institutional advantages of research training, grant applications, and the verifiability of evidence.
50%UnverifiedPeople with serious mental illness have an average life expectancy 15 to 25 years shorter than the general population, and this gap continues to widen.
50%UnverifiedAsylums were originally established out of a great optimism, with reformers hoping to provide a therapeutic environment for the mentally ill.
50%UnverifiedAndrew Scull described community care as a shell game with no pea, arguing that the promised community facilities were never truly established.
50%UnverifiedIn the United States today, the three largest inpatient psychiatric treatment facilities are in fact three prisons: Los Angeles County Jail, Chicago's Cook County Jail, and New York's Rikers Island.
50%UnverifiedAndrew Scull argues that the primary cause of the systematic abandonment of people with serious mental illness lies in public policy, rather than in psychiatry itself.
50%UnverifiedAs asylums expanded rapidly in scale at the end of the 19th century and their populations exceeded designed capacity, they gradually evolved into what Scull called museum-like disease warehouses.
50%UnverifiedAround 1930, there were only about 300 psychoanalysts in all of North America, who, at the classic psychoanalytic intensity of five hours per week, could treat at most a few thousand patients, while hospitals held hundreds of thousands of patients.
50%UnverifiedScull argues that diagnostic creep is also driven by patients and the public themselves, and that tightening diagnostic criteria often meets with strong resistance
50%UnverifiedECT is one of the few methods with scientific evidence-based support that is genuinely effective for severe clinical depression.
50%UnverifiedScull argues that the current promotion of ketamine and psychedelics as miracle treatments for depression is supported by extremely weak evidence.
50%UnverifiedTraining a scientist takes at least six or seven years, and the losses caused by interrupted research are invisible and irreversible.
50%UnverifiedScull argues that the negative images disseminated to the public through film and television almost brought medical interest in ECT to an end over the course of several decades.
50%UnverifiedAndrew Scull is a historian of psychiatry who discussed the surge in autism diagnoses on Lex Fridman's podcast
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