Hi. i have both books & have skimmed them, but i know what’s in them. The general view is that current biomedical/mainstream psychiatry is bad & there are better ways of helping people, & in general i agree, but there are a lot of complexities to it all.
The MIA web site is touted as being a place to get open & honest discussion going on all these areas, to seek a transformation of the system, & i recently started expressing my views on there, respectfully, & was banned. They didn’t want me expressing my pov. The place has been taken over by a very staunch anti-psychiatry contingent, who deny that mental illness exists & who want to see the entire pharmacological/psychiatric Industry totally abolished - it’s as extreme/fundamentalist as what they are rallying against.
i’ve read & studied Szasz, & i fundamentally disagree with him, & can make a very good & reasoned argument as to why i think he’s wrong. i’m not as sympathetic to the staunch anti-psychiatry argument as i was. i agree there needs to be a lot of reform & a transformation of the current system - but attacking & abolishing it all, & denial that mental illness exists; i don’t think is the way to go?
MIA to my perspective is largely just all polemics - No one there is really offering any kind of viable solution to anything, nor on how everything can be realistically changed. They’re Not offering solutions about what to do with the severely mentally ill, those with long term, enduring & severe problems.
Many of the people on MIA i don’t think were that ill to begin with - & it’s all very well for a lot of them to then speak out on everything, but they’re not speaking for everyone.
i think we need a shift away from the anti/pro psychiatry polemics & a far more comprehensive psychiatry & dialogue around it all. i’m very disappointed as to what the MIA project has turned into - it’s just perpetuating the same polemical arguments that have been going on for many decades. i don’t see what they’re hoping to achieve, & i don’t really see what they will achieve?
The genuinely & most severely mentally ill are still receiving abysmal treatment & having tough lives. If anything everything is worse. If anything the anti-psychiatry position plays directly into the hands of the Right wing, as evidenced as to what happened after de-institutionalisation.
i don’t think these areas can be reduced to polemics & ‘simplistic’ black & white arguments - complex factors are involved.