Szasz vs. Ellis

When people think of an “illness” they typically don’t automatically think of mental illness. They think about HIV, cancer, or even a cold or flu. However when it comes to mental illness it is a whole different idea. But is mental illness even real? Addressed in the book, The Myth of Mental Illness (1961), a psychiatrist Thomas Szasz argues that the idea of classifying psychological and emotional difficulties as “illnesses” takes away sense of control. Instead of holding people personally and morally responsible for their actions, he states, doctors attempt to “treat” the person, often with medications. Diagnosing mental illness, on the other hand, argue that mental disorders are as real as physical diseases and diagnosing them allows people

There can be side effects in the metaphor of mental illness. Humans are wired to use metaphors to break down complex ideas they cannot understand. I do agree with Szasz when he states that deviations cannot always be remedied with medical actions. A medical model of psychiatry can be inherently coercive because illness implies deviation from a norm. For example, homosexuality was once believed to be treatable mental illness and many members of the international homosexual community have been targets of forced sterilization in the last couple of centuries. Since many people were uncomfortable with the immorality of having a deviant sexual orientation, homosexuals were coerced into receiving treatment. It interesting that people who may actually

In the video Bellevue: Inside Out there were many patients that had similar diagnoses but very different symptoms. They all responded differently to their medications and acted differently. The most common diagnosis was Bipolar disorder and Schizophrenia. Many of the patients were a danger to themselves and others. The video was created to help the knowledge of Abnormal Psychology and help students understand what goes on in a psychiatric ward. Many people do believe that it was wrong for the APA to make a video about these people when they weren’t in their right minds from the heavy use of medication. The patients may not have been in the right mind but the video still

When someone labels somebody as them having a mental illness it enforces conformity to the standards of people powerful enough to impose their will on others. Even though the majority of mental health professionals feel like the idea of mental illness does not exist; they do feel as though it is important to think carefully about how we define a person's "differences". People who suffer from a mental illness have no reason to be blamed for their condition than those people who suffer from cancer or other problem. So having a mental or physical illness is no grounds for a person being labeled deviant. Also people should really stop applying these labels just to make others conform to their own standards of behavior (Macionis

There are many ways in which people view mental illness. “Some analysts suggest that the difference in types of mental disorders is linked to gender-role socialization, which instills aggressiveness in men and learned helplessness in women” (Kendall, 2013, p. 231). “Social scientists Joe R. Feagin and Melvin P. Sikes found that repeated personal encounters with racial hostility deeply affect the psychological well-being of most African Americans” (Kendall, 2013). “Feagin and Hernán Vera found that white Americans also pay a high psychic cost for the prevalence of racism because it

Dr. Glasser’s approach was non-traditional. He does not believe in the concept of mental illness unless there is something organically wrong with the brain that can be confirmed by a pathologist. He was among the first to question and doubt the existence

Thomas Szasz was one of the first psychiatrist to criticise psychiatry and argue about the concept of mental illness. His book “The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct” highlights the fundamental flaws in the administration of psychiatry, with the aim of challenging the medical characteristics of the concept of mental illness and the wrongful treatment of patients without their consent.

1.what was the psychologists (no name,on the first side of the article)claim in trying to defend Ethan?(cew)

Today mental illness continues to be misunderstood and is only often mentioned when justifying crimes of white men. For instance, James Fields, a nazi sympathizer, slammed his car towards a crowd of counter protesters during a white supremacist rally and is portrayed by big media sources such as Fox News as “mentally ill” instead of a terrorist. “The car Fields Jr. allegedly drove did not try to avoid the protesters, nor did he appear to be confused or panicked by the counter protesters” (Hutchinson Huffpost). Unlike Smith, who did not any remote hate towards the Clutter family, Fields was not confused when heading towards the protestors and is known to have a history of “not being afraid of showing how he feels” In other words, Fields’ heading towards the counter protestors was not a product of his mental illness but instead a product of his racist

I do agree that mental illness are simply behaviors that are not socially acceptable because our society has not educated themselves enough to accept them. When I was growing up society put a label on a mentally ill person as, crazy, mad, retarded and put them in our local faciality for retarded people. Even though some were severely crippled, developmentally slow and developmental challenged, they were put away in the local mental hospital or in a mental hospital ward. They were isolated from society, so they were not exposed to societies skills, and trained correctly to be a productive citizen, therefore they could not learn and become productive citizens.

Laing, who examined the existential aspect of symptom’s characteristic; and Michel Foucault, who explored the social and political factors of the institutionalization of those with mental illness. Mental illness, to these academics, was “a social construction used to label socially intolerable behavior” thereby branding it as individual flaws. Such claims from academic figures such as Szasz, Laing, and Foucault led to an anti-psychiatry movement that was highly critical of the psychiatric authority. Psychiatry and psychology at the time was argued to “enforce power relations rather than [treat] actual clinical conditions” which mirrored Szasz’s ideas on the political agenda behind psychology and

Thomas Szasz believes that what has been labeled mental illness more often than not reflects nonconformity or problems in living, not true illness. He says the diagnosis of mental illness is not medically based, but rather socially, politically, and/or morally based. According to Szasz, psychologists and psychiatrists are only worthy professionals if they view the people they help as clients rather than patients, and help them learn about

In 1961 Thomas Szasz penned a book by the title The Myth of Mental Illness that would go on to cause quite the stir in the world of psychiatry. In the book, Szasz stated his belief that what most psychiatrists would label as mental illnesses are in fact not illnesses at all, but instead what he would go on to call “problems in living.” This article will take a critical approach at Szasz reasons for his belief in these “problems in living” including an objective outline of his argument, a discussion on the validity of the argument and its’ premises, and finally the strongest objections to the argument. Szasz is an important figure in modern psychiatry and his opinions are very divisive but certainly worth discussing.

Psychologist Arthur Jensen stated the extent of the controversy best in the opening to his 1978 article,

In his view, today, particularly in the affluent West, all of the difficulties and problems in living are considered psychiatric diseases, and everyone (but the diagnosticians) is considered mentally ill (Szasz 4). However, there is very little evidence supporting the popular view that for the most part "mental illnesses" are mental diseases; that is, of a legitimate biological, physiological, neurological or chromosomal nature. Instead, as Szasz writes, "what people now call mental illnesses are, for the most part, communications expressing unacceptable ideas, often framed in an unusual idiom (Szasz 19)."