ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the question: ‘Why Does Psychiatry Exist?’ The chapter starts with an anonymised clinical case history and then explores definitions of ‘psychiatry’ and ‘mental disorder’ or ‘mental illness’. It summarises the known epidemiology of mental illness globally and demonstrates that, notwithstanding cultural variations and changes in descriptive terminology, mental illness is common, complex, and costly. This leads to a discussion of how societies respond to mental illness, focussing on the nature and role of psychiatry in this context. This chapter sets the scene for the rest of the book and provides background about the rationale for psychiatry, the essential tasks of the discipline, and the fundamental nature of the problems it addresses.
