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Mental Illness and its myths

Thomas Szasz is an academic, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. 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. He was a member of both the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychoanalytic Association and he was a firm critic of modern day approach to mental health and the stigma behind it.

At the beginning of his article, Szasz introduces the readers to the storyline of a book called ‘The lust lizard of melancholy cove’. The story includes a comedic description of a town in which all the depressed individuals are prescribed with placebos instead of the real medication. The story evolves into the way in which the lives of the individuals on those medicines start changing and the multiple effects it has. By introducing this story, he puts forth the idea in the reader’s head that maybe individuals put too much reliance on psychological help to improve their lives and our blind faith in the fact that they will be able to make us better.  

According to Szasz mental illness is a myth and the way it has been handled is incorrect. He believes that people create the notion of mental illness to hide behind when they can not deal with the trials and tribulations of life. He believed the medical model of psychiatry was inherently cohesive. The idea that he tries to put forth is that, problems such as depression and anxiety are not medical illnesses and can not be treated with medicines in the same way diseases are. Szasz was of the opinion that involuntary hospitalizations, the insanity defence, and the psychiatric control of psychotropic medications were all excuses and myths to hide behind. He believed in self action and that nobody can be excused for their actions because they are unstable mentally, or facing a mental problem. If an individual wanted help or wanted to be hospitalized, he or she would ask for it and that the individuals have the right to decide for themselves whether they want something or not. He did not believe that psychiatrists had the authority or should have the authority to be able to prescribe psychotropic medications to individuals based on what they think is their mental condition or what they think could help their mental state. The individual had to be held responsible for their actions and psychiatrists do not have a magic wand to wave that will make an individual happy and make their problems go away.

He highly criticized the DSM and accused them of wrongly diagnosing actual biological illnesses. He believed medical illness was a way of medicalizing morality and the typical dilemmas of everyday life. Allen Francis, M.D., chair of the previous DSM-IV goes on to criticize the DSM 5 and believes that it is a “victim of its own success”. According to him, the APA holds complete authority and monopoly over what is considered as a mental disease and what is not, and that they are the ones who categorize illnesses and diseases which the rest of us have to believe and follow. It has become the chief arbiter of who is ill and who is not, and such decisions affect everything from access to school services to disability payments and insurance eligibility. To go back to Szasz’s critic, this type of monopoly can only be harmful. In a sense, even the normal characteristics of an individual are turned into something much bigger than it is. Nobody is allowed to just have emotions and moods anymore, it has to be a symptom of a much bigger problem. And that, according to Szasz is the main problem of psychiatry. Wherein, he believes, that the problems individuals face are just effects of the complicated mortal lives of humans. And not everything needs to be medicalized. Our turning to psychiatrists is just a method of self-cure that has been given to us by society, wherein we unload our burden unto the hands of someone else.

But at the same time, it would be hard to see a world without psychologists and without psychiatrists. A glimpse of this is portrayed in the article by giving reference to the short story ‘The Insane Ones’. And so, the article ends at a middle ground. A ground between the true believers in psychiatry and the extremely harsh anti-psychiatrists such as Szasz. A middle ground must be found, where individuals are not hiding behind psychiatry and at the same time there is support and help when required in society. (Poulsen)

Works Cited


Poulsen, Bruce. Psychology Today. 17 September 2012. Article. 11 February 2018.
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