Editing Anti-psychiatry (section)

== Diverse paths ==
Szasz has since (2008) re-emphasized his disdain for the term anti-psychiatry, arguing that its legacy has simply been a "catchall term used to delegitimize and dismiss critics of psychiatric fraud and force by labeling them ''antipsychiatrists''". He points out that the term originated in a meeting of four psychiatrists (Cooper, Laing, [[Joseph Berke|Berke]] and [[Leon Redler|Redler]]) who never defined it yet "counter-label[ed] their discipline as anti-psychiatry", and that he considers Laing most responsible for popularizing it despite also personally distancing himself. Szasz describes the deceased (1989) Laing in [[vitriolic]] terms, accusing him of being irresponsible and equivocal on psychiatric diagnosis and use of force, and detailing his past "public behavior" as "a fit subject for moral judgment" which he gives as "a bad person and a fraud as a professional".<ref name="Szasz2008">{{cite journal|last=Szasz |first=Thomas |date=June 2008 |title=Debunking Antipsychiatry: Laing, Law, and Largactil |journal=Current Psychology |volume=27 |issue=2  |pages=79–101 |doi=10.1007/s12144-008-9024-z |s2cid=145618728 }}</ref>

Daniel Burston, however, has argued that overall the published works of Szasz and Laing demonstrate far more points of convergence and intellectual kinship than Szasz admits, despite the divergence on a number of issues related to Szasz being a libertarian and Laing an existentialist; that Szasz employs a good deal of exaggeration and distortion in his criticism of Laing's personal character, and unfairly uses Laing's personal failings and family woes to discredit his work and ideas; and that Szasz's "clear-cut, crystalline ethical principles are designed to spare us the agonizing and often inconclusive reflections that many clinicians face frequently in the course of their work".<ref>{{cite web |first=Daniel |last=Burston |year=2004 |url=http://www.ehinstitute.org/01-20-2004.html |title=Szasz, Laing and Existential Psychotherapy |publisher=Existential-Human Institute |access-date=2014-01-13 |archive-date=2012-10-31 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121031170519/http://www.ehinstitute.org/01-20-2004.html |url-status=live }}</ref> Szasz has indicated that his own views came from libertarian politics held since his [[teens]], rather than through experience in psychiatry; that in his "rare" contacts with involuntary mental patients in the past he either sought to discharge them (if they were not charged with a crime) or "assisted the prosecution in securing [their] conviction" (if they were charged with a crime and appeared to be [[prima facie]] guilty); that he is not opposed to consensual psychiatry and "does not interfere with the practice of the conventional psychiatrist", and that he provided "listening-and-talking ("psychotherapy")" for voluntary fee-paying clients from 1948 until 1996, a practice he characterizes as non-medical and not associated with his being a psychoanalytically trained psychiatrist.<ref name="Szasz2008" />

The [[gay rights activism|gay rights]] or [[gay liberation]] movement is often thought to have been part of anti-psychiatry in its efforts to challenge oppression and stigma and, specifically, to get [[homosexuality]] removed from the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. However, a psychiatric member of APA's Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Issues Committee has recently sought to distance the two, arguing that they were separate in the early 70s protests at APA conventions and that APA's decision to remove homosexuality was scientific and happened to coincide with the political pressure. Reviewers have responded, however, that the founders and movements were closely aligned; that they shared core texts, proponents and slogans; and that others have stated that, for example, the gay liberation critique was "made possible by (and indeed often explicitly grounded in) traditions of antipsychiatry".<ref>{{cite journal |author=McCommon B |year=2006 |title=Antipsychiatry and the Gay Rights Movement |url=http://ps.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?volume=57&page=1809 |journal=Psychiatr Serv |volume=57 |issue=12 |pages=1809; author reply 1809–10 |doi=10.1176/appi.ps.57.12.1809 |pmid=17158503 |s2cid=37419476 |access-date=2011-12-21 |archive-date=2012-07-21 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120721195037/http://ps.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?volume=57&page=1809 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |vauthors=Rissmiller DJ, Rissmiller J |year=2006 |title=Letter in reply |url=http://ps.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleid=97461 |journal=Psychiatr Serv |volume=57 |issue=12 |pages=1809–1810 |doi=10.1176/appi.ps.57.12.1809-a |access-date=2011-12-21 |archive-date=2012-07-14 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120714045851/http://ps.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleid=97461 |url-status=live }}</ref>

In the clinical setting, the two strands of anti-psychiatry—criticism of psychiatric knowledge and reform of its practices—were never entirely distinct. In addition, in a sense, anti-psychiatry was not so much a demand for the end of psychiatry, as it was an often self-directed demand for psychiatrists and allied professionals to question their own judgments, assumptions and practices. In some cases, the suspicion of non-psychiatric medical professionals towards the validity of psychiatry was described as anti-psychiatry, as well the criticism of "hard-headed" psychiatrists towards "soft-headed" psychiatrists. Most leading figures of anti-psychiatry were themselves psychiatrists, and equivocated over whether they were really "against psychiatry", or parts thereof. Outside the field of psychiatry, however—e.g. for activists and non-medical mental health professionals such as social workers and psychologists—'anti-psychiatry' tended to mean something more radical. The ambiguous term "anti-psychiatry" came to be associated with these more radical trends, but there was debate over whether it was a new phenomenon, whom it best described, and whether it constituted a genuinely singular movement.<ref>{{cite journal|first=Paul |last=Laffey |year=2003 |url=http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/hah/5.2/laffey.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/hah/5.2/laffey.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live |title=Antipsychiatry in Australia: Sources for a Social and Intellectual History |journal=Health & History |volume=5 |issue=2 |pages=17–36|doi=10.2307/40111451|jstor=40111451 }}</ref> In order to avoid any ambiguity intrinsic to the term anti-psychiatry, a current of thought that can be defined as critique of the basis of psychiatry, radical and unambiguous, aims for the complete elimination of psychiatry. The main representative of the critique of the basis of psychiatry is an Italian physician, [[Giorgio Antonucci]], the founder of the non-psychiatric approach to psychological suffering, who posited that the "essence of psychiatry lies in an ideology of discrimination".<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Man Who Closed the Asylums: Franco Basaglia and the Revolution in Mental Health Care|last=Foot|first=John|publisher=Verso Books|year=2015|isbn=9781781689264|location=New York|pages=105}}</ref>

In the 1990s, a tendency was noted among psychiatrists to characterize and to regard the anti-psychiatric movement as part of the past, and to view its ideological history as flirtation with the polemics of radical politics at the expense of scientific thought and enquiry. It was also argued, however, that the movement contributed towards generating demand for grassroots involvement in guidelines and advocacy groups, and to the shift from large mental institutions to community services. Additionally, community centers have tended in practice to distance themselves from the psychiatric/medical model and have continued to see themselves as representing a culture of resistance or opposition to psychiatry's authority. Overall, while antipsychiatry as a movement may have become an anachronism by this period and was no longer led by eminent psychiatrists, it has been argued that it became incorporated into the mainstream practice of mental health disciplines.<ref name="Nasser1995" /> On the other hand, mainstream psychiatry became more biomedical, increasing the gap between professionals.

Henry Nasrallah claims that while he believes anti-psychiatry consists of many historical exaggerations based on events and primitive conditions from a century ago, "antipsychiatry helps keep us honest and rigorous about what we do, motivating us to relentlessly seek better diagnostic models and treatment paradigms. Psychiatry is far more scientific today than it was a century ago, but misperceptions about psychiatry continue to be driven by abuses of the past. The best antidote for antipsychiatry allegations is a combination of personal integrity, scientific progress, and sound evidence-based clinical care".<ref name="nasral" />

A criticism was made in the 1990s that three decades of anti-psychiatry had produced a large literature critical of psychiatry, but little discussion of the deteriorating situation of the mentally troubled in American society. Anti-psychiatry crusades have thus been charged with failing to put suffering individuals first, and therefore being similarly guilty of what they blame psychiatrists for. The rise of anti-psychiatry in Italy was described by one observer as simply "a transfer of psychiatric control from those with medical knowledge to those who possessed socio-political power".<ref name="MicalePorter" />

Critics of this view, however, from an anti-psychiatry perspective, are quick to point to the industrial aspects of psychiatric treatment itself as a primary causal factor in this situation that is described as "deteriorating". The numbers of people labeled "mentally ill", and in treatment, together with the severity of their conditions, have been going up primarily due to the direct efforts of the mental health movement, and mental health professionals, including psychiatrists, and not their detractors. Envisioning "mental health treatment" as violence prevention has been a big part of the problem, especially as you are dealing with a population that is not significantly more violent than any other group.{{Citation needed|date=April 2025|reason=Statistical evidence needed.}}

On October 7, 2016, the [[Ontario Institute for Studies in Education]] (OISE) at the University of Toronto announced that they had established a scholarship for students doing theses in the area of antipsychiatry. Called "The [[Bonnie Burstow]] Scholarship in Antipsychiatry", it is to be awarded annually to an OISE thesis student. An unprecedented step, the scholarship should further the cause of freedom of thought and the exchange of ideas in academia. The scholarship is named in honor of Bonnie Burstow, a faculty member at the University of Toronto, a radical feminist, and an antipsychiatry activist. She is also the author of ''Psychiatry and the Business of Madness'' (2015).

Some components of antipsychiatric theory have in recent decades been reformulated into a critique of "corporate psychiatry", heavily influenced by the [[pharmaceutical industry]]. A recent editorial about this was published in the ''British Journal of Psychiatry'' by Moncrieff, arguing that modern psychiatry has become a handmaiden to conservative political commitments. [[David Healy (psychiatrist)|David Healy]] is a psychiatrist and professor in psychological medicine at [[Cardiff University School of Medicine]], [[Wales]]. He has a special interest in the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on medicine and [[academia]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/547497_5 |title=Paradigms of Psychiatry: Eclecticism and Its Discontents |author=Seyyed Nassir Ghaemi |year=2006 |volume=19 |issue=6 |website=Current Opinion in Psychiatry |access-date=2013-03-28 |archive-date=2013-11-23 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131123125125/http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/547497_5 |url-status=live }}{{registration required}}</ref>
[[File:NorthernMichiganAsylumCTraverseCityMI.JPG|thumb|left|200px|With the decline of industrial age psychiatric hospitals, efforts to rehabilitate them have begun, like the [[Traverse City State Hospital]] becoming the Village at Grand Traverse Commons, complete with homes, offices, and businesses, including a wine bar.<ref>[http://michiganradio.org/post/and-after-photos-traverse-citys-converted-mental-hospital "Before and after photos of Traverse City's converted mental hospital"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170211155411/http://michiganradio.org/post/and-after-photos-traverse-citys-converted-mental-hospital |date=2017-02-11 }}, Michigan Radio Newsroom. Michigan Radio. March 19, 2013. Retrieved 8 feb 2017</ref>]]
In the meantime, members of the psychiatric consumer/survivor movement continued to campaign for reform, empowerment and alternatives, with an increasingly diverse representation of views. Groups often have been opposed and undermined, especially when they proclaim to be, or when they are labeled as being, "anti-psychiatry".<ref name="McLean2003part2">{{cite journal |last=McLean |first=A. |year=2003 |url=http://www.psychosocial.com/IJPR_8/Recovering1-McLean.html |title=Recovering Consumers and a Broken Mental Health System in the United States: Ongoing Challenges for Consumers/ Survivors and the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. Part II: Impact of Managed Care and Continuing Challenges |journal=International Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilitation |volume=8 |pages=58–70 |access-date=2011-08-31 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161107122745/http://www.psychosocial.com/IJPR_8/Recovering1-McLean.html |archive-date=2016-11-07 |url-status=dead }}</ref> However, as of the 1990s, more than 60 percent of ex-patient groups reportedly support anti-psychiatry beliefs and consider themselves to be "psychiatric survivors".<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://www.umaine.edu/JMB/archives/volume15/15_1-2_1994winterspring.html#abstract4 |author=Everett B |year=1994 |title=Something is happening: the contemporary consumer and psychiatric survivor movement in historical context |journal=Journal of Mind and Behavior |volume=15 |pages=55–7 |citeseerx=10.1.1.413.3586 |access-date=2011-08-31 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110928102042/http://www.umaine.edu/jmb/archives/volume15/15_1-2_1994winterspring.html#abstract4 |archive-date=2011-09-28 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Although anti-psychiatry is often attributed to a few famous figures in psychiatry or academia, it has been pointed out that consumer/survivor/ex-patient individuals and groups preceded it, drove it and carried on through it.<ref name="Rissmiller2006">{{cite journal |url=http://ps.psychiatryonline.org/data/Journals/PSS/3770/06ps863.pdf |title=Evolution of the Antipsychiatry Movement into mental health consumerism |last1=Rissmiller |first1=D.J. |last2=Rissmiller |first2=J.H. |date=June 2006 |volume=57 |issue=6 |journal=Psychiatric Services |pages=863–866 |pmid=16754765 |doi=10.1176/appi.ps.57.6.863 |s2cid=19635873 |access-date=2012-03-16 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120919154449/http://ps.psychiatryonline.org/data/Journals/PSS/3770/06ps863.pdf |archive-date=2012-09-19 |url-status=dead }}</ref>