The myth of mental illness: 50 years later

Abstract

Summary Fifty years ago I noted that modern psychiatry rests on a basic conceptual error – the systematic misinterpretation of unwanted behaviours as the diagnoses of mental illnesses pointing to underlying neurological diseases susceptible to pharmacological treatments. I proposed instead that we view persons called ‘mental patients' as active players in real life dramas, not passive victims of pathophysiological processes outside their control. In this essay, I briefly review the recent history of this culturally validated medicalisation of (mis)behaviours and its social consequences.

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