Professionalization of psychiatry

“Between approximately 1880 and 1917 psychiatry shed its former status as a beleaguered specialty isolated from the rest of the medical profession. The rise of medical interest in psychotherapy, the founding of the mental hygiene movement in 1908, the creation of new psychiatric societies and journals, the rapid expansion of a body of abstract knowledge – all developments in which [Adolf] Meyer was intimately involved – testify to the increasing professionalization of psychiatry during those years. The integration of psychiatry into the medical curriculum was a crucial step in this process. Thus the founding in 1908 of the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins was a decisive event, signaling as it did the recognition by the outstanding medical school of the day of the importance of psychiatry as an academic specialty” (Leys, 453).