Anti-psychiatry is basically the idea that psychiatric treatment of people with mental illness is more harmful than helpful. It has been argued that the anti-psychiatry movement is a product of the twentieth century, probably because the term 'anti-psychiatry' was first coined in 1967 by the South African psychiatrist David Cooper in his book Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry. It has also been argued that there has been an anti-psychiatric trend in the West since the eighteenth century, although it has not been called 'anti-psychiatry'.
In 1961, the American psychiatrist Thomas Sasse published The Myth of Mental Illness. In the same year, Michel Foucault, the famous French philosopher, published Madness and Civilisation. In the same year, the Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Lann published The Self and the Other. Other prominent figures involved in this movement included the French psychiatrist Jacob Lagan and the American (actually Canadian) sociologist Erf Goldman.
With these psychiatrists and scholars, the 'anti-psychiatric movement' became an in-depth reflection on psychosis (i.e. mental illness). The inequality of power between psychiatrists and patients, the dangers of abuse and misuse of psychiatric diagnosis and treatment, the excessive subjectivity and dehumanisation of psychiatric diagnosis and treatment, the many shortcomings of psychiatric hospitals, and so on, were revealed.
Thanks to this movement, in today's European and American societies, the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness is becoming more and more humane. In fact, the banner of "anti-psychiatry" is still being raised by certain psychiatrists and psychologists, such as the New York Review of Books and the New Yorker, who occasionally write articles criticising and questioning psychiatric treatment.
The anti-psychiatry trend and movement illustrates that psychiatry (or psychiatric science) is a young discipline. The complexity of the human brain and psyche makes mental illness impossible to measure by strict scientific standards. Until today, while physical illnesses can be detected by instruments, mental illnesses can only be diagnosed by symptoms (i.e. by subjective human judgement).
I believe that without this reflection and movement, the reality of spiritual science and the treatment of mental illness in Western society today would be not very different from what we saw in Leap into the Madding Crowd.
And from an anti-oppression perspective, the anti-psychiatric movement has had a positive impact on securing the rights of people with mental illness.
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