Anti-psychiatry - Key Anti-psychiatry Concerns

Key Anti-psychiatry Concerns

Two central contentions of the anti-psychiatry movement are that:

• The specific definitions of, or criteria for, hundreds of current psychiatric diagnoses or disorders are vague and arbitrary, leaving too much room for opinions and interpretations to meet basic scientific standards.
• Prevailing psychiatric treatments are ultimately far more damaging than helpful to patients.

Other key criticisms of mainstream psychiatry include:

• Inappropriate and overuse of medical concepts and tools to understand the mind and society, including the miscategorization of normal reactions to extreme situations as psychiatric disorders;
• Scientifically and/or clinically ill-founded system of categorical diagnoses (e.g., Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM), which stigmatizes patients;
• Unwillingness to develop and use objective tests (such as intelligence/cognitive tests) to determine patients' state (such as strong psychosis)
• Inappropriate (i.e. unvalidated) exclusion of other approaches to mental distress/disorder;
• Unexamined abuse or misuse of power over patients who are too often treated against their will;
• Relation of power between patients and psychiatrists, as well as the institutional environment, is too often experienced by patients as demeaning and controlling;
• Compromise to medical and ethical integrity because of financial and professional links with pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies in countries where these companies are a force.
• Forced use of government (both civilian and military) psychiatric treatment prevents the patient from choosing private psychiatric or alternative treatment thereby denying the patient of his or her basic rights.