Has psychiatry ever caused brain damage and birth defects?

Psychiatry is more than medications and treatments. So it is not psychiatry, itself, that is responsible for any ill effects.

SOME medications and treatments, used in the Practice of Medicine, which includes the sub-specialty of psychiatry, have been responsible for ill effects. But this is an expected hazard of progress in the Practice of Medicine as well as culture. For example, today surgeons know to keep a patient with a belly wound "NPO", meaning "give nothing by mouth". But in the early Practice of Medicine, bacteria were not known-- that discovery came later. So many people died from abdominal wounds, especially in early wars and traumas, because no one knew anything better than to let a patient eat and drink fluids. Even the English let wounded soldiers drink tea, until doctors figured out that this could cause vomiting, aspiration of vomit into the lungs, and death.

Anesthesia was another area that needed time to educate men (doctors) about its hazards. Chloroform, one of the first anesthetic inhalation compounds used for surgery, was a godsend to people who before would have died from wounds or infections. Just a simple infected abscessed tooth could kill. Yet, at the same time, Chloroform brought unexpected dangers--including fire, and including putting a patient so far "under" that the patient died from respiratory depression. We didn't have machines to monitor dosages, or monitor heart and respiration. So, yes, people died on the operating table.

Psychiatry does not "operate", but some treatments have evolved over time. For example, in 1800s "insane asylums", patients were often put into "ice baths". They were restrained in a tub filled with ice below, on top, and surrounding the person. Doctors, back then, did not know ice could be such a shock that it could stop a person's heart, or that a person could become hypothermic. Doctors back then believed the physical "shock" of ice cold temp could astound a patient so much that it would interrupt psychosis, depression, and "catatonic" reactions to life's problems. Years later, hospitals used "steam baths", looking for a mental-emotional change in symptoms, but still unaware of any dangers. (Neither steam baths or ice baths are used now, and "mental institutions" were closed, finally, in the 1980s.)

However, controversies remain about ECT, Electroconvulsive therapy, in which current is passed through the brain to bring about a change in major severe depression, acute mania, and certain schizophrenic syndromes. Patients who have undergone ECT say the current destroyed their long term memories and creates long-lasting confusion. In use for 60-some years, today, ECT is administered to an estimated 100,000 people a year, and is the subject of much controversy. Results vary, widely.

Turning strictly to birth defects...

Birth defects must occur during pregnancy for the condition to be a birth defect. Nothing is done directly to the fetus, but until the 1950s, doctors did not know that many medications pass from the maternal blood stream to the fetus, or from breast milk to a newborn (when an acquired condition could result). However, there is no central database list of medications that DO cause birth defects. INSTEAD, now, ALL medications are assumed to pass from maternal blood to the fetus. Therefore, IF a mother MUST have a medication, doctors try to limit the dose AND duration of the medication for at least the first 2 trimesters of pregnancy.

No doctor wants a medication or treatment to do harm (to an adult, child, or fetus). Developed countries like the US oversee medications and side effect reports. Extensive animal and human studies and reporting of bad effects makes US medication prescribing one of the safest systems in the world. Yet, it is impossible to predict all problems beforehand.

In short, the answer to your question about birth defects is No, except before 1950 when little was known about how chemicals pass from mother to fetus.