The bicentennial volume of the British Journal of Psychiatry: the winding pathway of mental science

The Asylum Journal, first published in 1853, is now, as the British Journal of Psychiatry, in its 200th volume. It has changed greatly in its breadth and scope, but its core values and concerns – professional respect, removal of stigma, delivery of care, understanding of pathology, and informed treatment – have remained at its heart throughout. We predict some changes for the future, but not dramatic ones, and conclude that the impinging advances of science will elucidate and refine, but not remove, the need for a journal that is proud to represent psychiatry or, in the words of John Bucknill, its first editor,’to render prominent its characteristics and to stamp it as a specialty’