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In 2008, Mojtabai and Olfson reported that there was a significant decline in the number of psychiatrists specializing in psychotherapy, along with an increase of those specializing in pharmacotherapy. Since then, this trend undoubtedly continued, with many physicians (both family practitioners and psychiatrists) providing psychotropic medications to their patients (Olfson et al. 2014). Why has this shift occurred? Is it simply the result of greater insurance reimbursements for providing medications rather than “talk therapy”? (Harris 2011). Are there other reasons? Why has psychiatry prioritized the biomedical model and devalued the biopsychosocial model as first explicated by George Engel? (1977, 1980).
On page 172 of a 315-page volume with various religious imagery, Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry, Jeffrey A. Lieberman, Lawrence C. Kolb Professor and chair of psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and former president of the American Psychiatric Association, states that “psychiatry's dramatic transformation from a profession of shrinks to a profession of pill-pushers came through sheer serendipity” (p. 172). That Lieberman considers psychopharmacology the Holy Grail of psychiatric treatment is indicated by assertions such as this: “the mind-boggling effectiveness of psychiatric drugs began to transform the fundamental nature of psychiatry and elevate its professional status. The black sheep of medicine could rejoin the flock because it finally had medicine” (p. 189).
In this volume, Lieberman describes the historical arc of the profession of psychiatry, from its status as “stepchild of medicine” to the