Report on Symposium: “Laying the Ghosts of the Asylum Era: Anger Resolution in Psychiatry”
Report on Symposium: “Laying the Ghosts of the Asylum Era: Anger Resolution in Psychiatry”
This document is a report on a Symposium held at the Congress of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, at Hobart, Tasmania, on 21st May 2012. It begins with an account of the historical and immediate background to discussion of the asylum era. This is followed by details of what happened on the 21st May. There is then a more technical section describing how various treatments in psychiatry, while in themselves effective, came to be abused. Finally there is a reflection on how we all come to terms with a difficult history, and can move on to an emerging new style for the psychiatric profession.