Thomas Szasz: Does mental illness exist?

A conversation with Thomas Szasz. Filmed at the Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Mental Health where he discusses ‘does mental illness exist?

“If you talk to God, you are praying;

If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.”–Thomas S. Szasz.

Wednesday 10 Th September, 2014

Thomas S. Szasz received his M.D. degree from the University of Cincinnati. He was a professor of psychiatry emeritus at SUNY Health Science Centre in Syracuse, New York, where he taught from 1956. Dr. Szasz is the author of over 600 articles, book chapters, book reviews, and newspaper columns. His classic The Myth of Mental Illness (1961) made him a figure of international famnd controversy. Many of his works–such as Law, Liberty, and Psychiatry, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Ceremonial Chemistry, and Our Right to Drugs are regarded as among the most influential in the 20th century by leaders in medicine, law, and the social sciences. Listen to Myth of Mental Illness (1961) in which the late professor says psychiatry is made up and fraudulent.

Szasz argued that mental illnesses are not real in the sense that cancers are real. Except for a few identifiable brain diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, there are “neither biological or chemical tests nor biopsy or necropsy findings for verifying or falsifying DSM diagnoses”, i.e. there are no objective methods for detecting the presence or absence of mental illness.

His views on special treatment followed from libertarian roots, based on the principles that each person has the right to bodily and mental self-ownership and the right to be free from violence from others, although he criticized the “Free World” as well as the communist states for their use of psychiatry. He believed that suicide, the practice of medicine, the use and sale of drugs and sexual relations should be private, contractual, and legal.

After listening you can listen to one of Prof Szasz students now Dr. John Breeding about Thomas Szaz, psychiatry, fraud in mental health and truth about Psych Drugs, Shock and other treatment methods in Biological Psychiatry. Visit Dr. Breedings website. http://www.wildestcolts.com .

Finally Doctor Szasz talks to a group at the University of Birmingham where he tells them how important it is to be self informed, for there is a power imbalance, The late Dr Szasz, ask “Is there a law for cancer or a law for heart illness “ ? Yet there are laws for mental health.