Andrew Scull

Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego, and a historian of psychiatry and mental health. He is the author of Madness in Civilization and Desperate Remedies, among other works on the social history of mental illness and psychiatric treatment.

Psychiatry Has Treatments but No Reliable Cures for Serious Mental Illness

Historian Andrew Scull argues that psychiatry can relieve severe suffering but still lacks cures or biological explanations for its major diagnoses. In his account, the field’s history—from asylums, lobotomies and early shock therapies to modern drugs and diagnostic categories—shows how readily limited evidence and institutional convenience can be mistaken for medical understanding. Scull’s practical conclusion is not to reject treatment, but to judge it by individual benefit and harm while treating housing, continuity of care and patient agency as clinical necessities.

Lex FridmanSep 17, 202621 min read