Dr Eric Ratcliff will present The Politics of Insanity.
in the Meeting Room, QVMAG at Inveresk
2.00 pm Sunday 23rd February 2014
Admission: $5 General Public, $3 Friends of the Museum, $2 Students
Free for members of the Royal Society of Tasmania
To assist us with the organization of this event
RSVP by Thursday 20th February 2014:
Email bookings@qvmag.tas.gov.au or telephone 6323 3798
Controversies within the profession of psychiatry have re-entered the public domain, locally with the impending proclamation of a new Mental Health Act in Tasmania, and globally with the publication last year of DSM-5, the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association. When mankind gives a name to anything, it tends to fix and change perceptions of it, and these may have unintended consequences. The address will consider issues surrounding diagnosis in psychiatry, including the effects of developing an influential document. It will also consider the place of medications in the treatment of mental disorders, and public and professional concerns surrounding the marketing of these by powerful pharmaceutical companies increasingly driven by commercial rather than ethical motivations.
Dr Ratcliff was born in Launceston and educated at Launceston High School, the University of Tasmania and the University of Queensland, where he graduated in medicine in 1964.
He has been engaged in the practice of psychiatry since 1967, and became a Member of the ANZ College of Psychiatrists in 1976 and a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists in 1981. He worked in public practice in Tasmania and Victoria, becoming clinical director of the mental health service based in Launceston before moving in 1985 to private practice in general adult and forensic psychiatry.
He has served as a member of General Council of the RANZCP for a total of 15 years, and chaired its committees concerned with appropriate practice and professional ethics for eight years. He was awarded the College Medal of Honour in 2006.
He has not been able to find time to retire, but in his spare time he is an architectural historian, and his major work, a history of building and architecture in Tasmania from Aboriginal times to 1914, is to published later this
