Controversies in Psychiatry

Question 1

What is stigma?

Answer 1

Stigma “is a social construction that devalues people due to a distinguishing characteristic or mark”

Leads to discriminatory practices

Question 2

What is discrimination?

Answer 2

Discrimination “is the actual behavior towards another group. It involves excluding or restricting members of one group from opportunities that are available to other groups”

Question 3

What is prejudice?

Answer 3

Prejudice “is a prejudgment: i.e. an assumption made about someone or something before having adequate knowledge to be able to do so with guaranteed accuracy”

Question 4

What are the effects of stigma in mental illness?

Answer 4

“The problem with mental illness is that so many who have it are reluctant to risk talking about mental illness or seeking help for it”

Question 5

Antipsychiatry Movement - RD Laing?

Answer 5

Diagnosis by conduct a mistake

Schizophrenia a theory and not a fact

Questioned the use of antipsychotics

Question 6

Antipsychiatry Movement - Thomas Szasz?

Answer 6

The myth of mental illness

Mental illnesses don’t exist in the sense that cancers do

Diseases are “malfunctions of the human body, of the heart, the liver, the kidney, the brain” while “no behavior or misbehavior is a disease or can be a disease. That’s not what diseases are.”

“If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; If you talk to the dead, you are a schizophrenic.”

Question 7

Controversies in psychiatry and mental illness?

Answer 7

• Anti-psychiatry movements
• Diagnosis
• Social control
• Treatment without consent
• Rising rates of antidepressant prescription
• Security
• Detention