History of writing as a tool for the practice of psychiatry and mental health

Abstract

Writing as we know it today is a relatively new development in the cultural history of humanity. More current still is the massiveness of the literacy of the population. Since the origins of psychiatry, writing has been an inherent part of it in the medical literature, but it has also been a tool applied in practice in various formats, both for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. However, compared to the classic communication tools, such as speech, and in child psychiatry, also play and drawing, writing seems to have been relegated. In this bibliographical research, that would not have precedents of its kind, a historical overview of the subject was carried out from the emergence of psychiatry as a specialty to the present day; where events such as the World Wars, the evolution of the concept of disability or the COVID-19 pandemic seem to have played a key role in delimiting variables that characterize at least three historical periods and presuming a fourth in full gestation. The technological support with which it is written and the use and format given to writing were the main variables of the different periods. Being a time of very high demand in Mental Health, challenging in its accessibility and the massive use of writing from information technologies, this research would represent a significant contribution to the development of writing as a tool for the practice of psychiatry and mental health.