Liberation by Oppression

Last updated
Liberation by Oppression: A Comparative Study of Slavery and Psychiatry
Liberation by Oppression.jpg
Author Thomas Szasz
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Subject Psychiatry
Published2002
Media typePrint
ISBN 978-0-7658-0145-6

Liberation by Oppression: A Comparative Study of Slavery and Psychiatry is a 2002 critique of psychiatry by the psychiatrist Thomas Szasz.

Contents

Summary

Szasz compares the justification of psychiatry with the justification of slavery in the United States, stating that both necessarily deny the subject's right to personhood.

Reception

Reviews on this book were published by Psychiatric Services , [1] The British Journal of Psychiatry , [2] [3] Ethical Human Sciences and Services, [4] and The Independent Review . [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Psychiatric hospital</span> Hospital specializing in the treatment of serious mental disorders

Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental health hospitals,behavioral health hospitals, are hospitals or wards specializing in the treatment of severe mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, dissociative identity disorder, major depressive disorder and many others. Psychiatric hospitals vary widely in their size and grading. Some hospitals may specialize only in short-term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients. Others may specialize in the temporary or permanent containment of patients who need routine assistance, treatment, or a specialized and controlled environment due to a psychiatric disorder. Patients often choose voluntary commitment, but those whom psychiatrists believe to pose significant danger to themselves or others may be subject to involuntary commitment and involuntary treatment. Psychiatric hospitals may also be called psychiatric wards/units when they are a subunit of a regular hospital.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anti-psychiatry</span> Movement against psychiatric treatment

Anti-psychiatry is a movement based on the view that psychiatric treatment is often more damaging than helpful to patients, highlighting controversies about psychiatry. Objections include the reliability of psychiatric diagnosis, the questionable effectiveness and harm associated with psychiatric medications, the failure of psychiatry to demonstrate any disease treatment mechanism for psychiatric medication effects, and legal concerns about equal human rights and civil freedom being nullified by the presence of diagnosis. Historically critiques of psychiatry came to light after focus on the extreme harms associated with electroconvulsive treatment or insulin shock therapy. The term "anti-psychiatry" is in dispute and often used to dismiss all critics of psychiatry, many of who agree that a specialized role of helper for people in emotional distress may at times be appropriate, and allow for individual choice around treatment decisions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clozapine</span> Atypical antipsychotic medication

Clozapine is a psychiatric medication and is the first atypical antipsychotic. It is primarily used to treat people with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorders who have had an inadequate response to other antipsychotics or who have been unable to tolerate other drugs due to extrapyramidal side effects. It is also used for the treatment of psychosis in Parkinson's disease. Clozapine is regarded as the gold-standard treatment when other medication has been insufficiently effective and its use is recommended by multiple international treatment guidelines, after resistance to earlier neuroleptic treatment is established.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Szasz</span> Hungarian-American psychiatrist and activist (1920–2012)

Thomas Stephen Szasz was a Hungarian-American academic and psychiatrist. He served for most of his career as professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York. A distinguished lifetime fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a life member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, he was best known as a social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, as what he saw as the social control aims of medicine in modern society, as well as scientism. His books The Myth of Mental Illness (1961) and The Manufacture of Madness (1970) set out some of the arguments most associated with him.

Koro is a culture bound delusional disorder in which individuals have an overpowering belief that their sex organs are retracting and will disappear, despite the lack of any true longstanding changes to the genitals. Koro is also known as shrinking penis, and it is listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Healy (psychiatrist)</span> Irish-born pharmacologist

David HealyFRCPsych, a professor of psychiatry at Bangor University in the United Kingdom, is a psychiatrist, psychopharmacologist, scientist and author. His main areas of research are the contribution of antidepressants to suicide, conflict of interest between pharmaceutical companies and academic medicine, and the history of pharmacology. Healy has written more than 150 peer-reviewed articles, 200 other articles, and 20 books, including The Antidepressant Era, The Creation of Psychopharmacology, The Psychopharmacologists Volumes 1–3, Let Them Eat Prozac and Mania: A Short History of Bipolar Disorder.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union</span> Misuse of psychiatry for political purposes in the Soviet Union

There was systematic political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union, based on the interpretation of political opposition or dissent as a psychiatric problem. It was called "psychopathological mechanisms" of dissent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cognitive analytic therapy</span> Form of psychological therapy

Cognitive analytic therapy (CAT) is a form of psychological therapy initially developed in the United Kingdom by Anthony Ryle. This time-limited therapy was developed in the context of the UK's National Health Service with the aim of providing effective and affordable psychological treatment which could be realistically provided in a resource constrained public health system. It is distinctive due to its intensive use of reformulation, its integration of cognitive and analytic practice and its collaborative nature, involving the patient very actively in their treatment.

People with schizophrenia are at a higher than average risk of physical ill health, and earlier death than the general population. The fatal conditions include cardiovascular, respiratory and metabolic disorders.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anatoly Koryagin</span> Soviet psychiatrist and dissident (b. 1938)

Anatoly Ivanovich Koryagin is a psychiatrist and Soviet dissident. He holds a Candidate of Science degree. Along with others, he exposed political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union. He pointed out Russia constructed psychiatric prisons to punish dissidents.

Care Programme Approach (CPA) in the United Kingdom is a system of delivering community mental health services to individuals diagnosed with a mental illness. It was introduced in England in 1991 and by 1996 become a key component of the mental health system in England. The approach requires that health and social services assess need, provided a written care plan, allocate a care coordinator, and then regularly review the plan with key stakeholders, in keeping with the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990.

The Critical Psychiatry Network (CPN) is a psychiatric organization based in the United Kingdom. It was created by a group of British psychiatrists who met in Bradford, England in January 1999 in response to proposals by the British government to amend the Mental Health Act 1983. They expressed concern about the implications of the proposed changes for human rights and the civil liberties of people with mental health illness. Most people associated with the group are practicing consultant psychiatrists in the United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS), among them Dr Joanna Moncrieff. A number of non-consultant grade and trainee psychiatrists are also involved in the network.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Basaglia Law</span>

Basaglia Law or Law 180 is the Italian Mental Health Act of 1978 which signified a large reform of the psychiatric system in Italy, contained directives for the closing down of all psychiatric hospitals and led to their gradual replacement with a whole range of community-based services, including settings for acute in-patient care. The Basaglia Law is the basis of Italian mental health legislation. The principal proponent of Law 180 and its architect was Italian psychiatrist Franco Basaglia. Therefore, Law 180 is known as the “Basaglia Law” from the name of its promoter. The Parliament of Italy approved the Law 180 on 13 May 1978, and thereby initiated the gradual dismantling of psychiatric hospitals. Implementation of the psychiatric reform law was accomplished in 1998 which marked the very end of the state psychiatric hospital system in Italy. The Law has had worldwide impact as other counties took up widely the Italian model. It was Democratic Psychiatry which was essential in the birth of the reform law of 1978.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Semen Gluzman</span> Ukrainian psychiatrist

Semen (Semyon) Fishelevich Gluzman is a Ukrainian psychiatrist and human rights activist.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the psychiatric survivors movement:

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to psychiatry:

Sir Robin Richard Tilt is a British public servant. Formerly a prison governor, he served as Director General of Her Majesty's Prison Service (1996–99), Social Fund Commissioner (2000–09), Chairman of the Social Security Advisory Committee (2004–11) and Independent Chair of the Internet Watch Foundation (2012–17). He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 1999 Birthday Honours.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Struggle against political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union</span>

In the Soviet Union, systematic political abuse of psychiatry took place and was based on the interpretation of political dissent as a psychiatric problem. It was called "psychopathological mechanisms" of dissent.

Psychiatry is, and has historically been, viewed as controversial by those under its care, as well as some sociologists and psychiatrists themselves. There are a variety of reasons cited for this controversy, including the subjectivity of diagnosis, the use of diagnosis and treatment for social and political control including detaining citizens and treating them without consent, the side effects of treatments such as electroconvulsive therapy, antipsychotics and historical procedures like the lobotomy and other forms of psychosurgery or insulin shock therapy, and the history of racism within the profession in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aggrey Burke</span> British psychiatrist (b.1943)

Aggrey Washington Burke is a British retired psychiatrist and academic, born in Jamaica, who spent the majority of his medical career at St George's Hospital in London, UK, specialising in transcultural psychiatry and writing literature on changing attitudes towards black people and mental health. He has carried out extensive research on racism and mental illness and is the first black consultant psychiatrist appointed by Britain's National Health Service (NHS).

References

  1. Padykula, Nora LaFond (April 2004). "Liberation by Oppression" (PDF). Psychiatric Services . 55 (4): 461. doi:10.1176/appi.ps.55.4.461. ISSN   1557-9700. S2CID   74514592. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-02-02. Retrieved 12 February 2012.
  2. Persaud, Raj (2003). "Liberation by Oppression". The British Journal of Psychiatry . 182 (3): 273. doi: 10.1192/bjp.182.3.273 .
  3. Schaler, J. A. (2003). "Slavery and psychiatry". The British Journal of Psychiatry . 183 (1): 77–78. doi: 10.1192/bjp.183.1.77-a . PMID   12835252.
  4. Cohen, David (2003). "Liberation by Oppression: A Comparative Study of Slavery and Psychiatry". Ethical Human Sciences and Services. 5 (1): 75–78. ISSN   1523-150X.
  5. Baker, Robert (Winter 2003). "Psychiatry's Gentleman Abolitionist" (PDF). The Independent Review . VII (3): 455–460. ISSN   1086-1653 . Retrieved 12 February 2012.