Psychiatric

How to spell psychiatric

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce psychiatric

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does psychiatric mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the medical study and treatment of mental illness.

Psychiatric in a sentence

• The hospital opened a new psychiatric ward for adult patients.

• Her doctor referred her for a full psychiatric assessment.

Where does psychiatric come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word reaches back to two Greek roots: psyche, meaning 'mind' or 'soul', and iatros, meaning 'a healer' or 'physician'. The combined idea of 'healing the mind' produced the German term Psychiatrie, coined by the physician Johann Christian Reil around 1808, from which the English noun 'psychiatry' was drawn. The adjective 'psychiatric' followed in the nineteenth century, simply adding the familiar Greek-derived ending -ic to describe anything relating to that branch of medicine. The same psyche root sits behind a whole family of mind words such as 'psychology', 'psyche', and 'psychic', while the iatros healer root reappears in 'paediatric' and 'geriatric'. The notorious spelling trap is the opening 'psych': the p is silent and the y does the work of a short i sound, a leftover of the Greek letter psi.

How the word is built

• psych- (from Greek psyche: mind/soul)
• iatr (from Greek iatros: healer/physician)
• -ic (adjective suffix)