The Case Against Psychiatry: Why Psychiatry is Evil and Must Be Abolished

I found a link to this online today and can't get it out of my thoughts now. As someone who has long considered mental illness/problems/etc to be a part of her life, either regarding myself or others, this is kind of killing me, to think that we're all just weak, stupid failures who can't handle our lives, so we swallow claims about disordered thinking, blindly following our social norms and feeling there's something wrong with us, whatever not may be.

I'm a little skeptical of the original claim that mental illness doesn't exist because there is no reliable evidence for biological causes. That's semantics; call them mental disorders then.

The author's discussion about suicide terrifies me, as someone who has sought help of my own volition for suicidal (and other self-abusive) ideation. What I get from that essay is we shouldn't help someone who's suicidal, at all. Maybe even encourage it - they are perfectly rational and there's nothing wrong with their thinking, since there's no such thing as mental illness, and you can't be sure of what they're really feeling, you shouldn't violate their autonomy and right to self-ownership by trying to stop them from making the ultimate free decision. By extension, one shouldn't be disturbed by suicidal thoughts, and should not seek help, because that's just social brainwashing, nothing real or valid.

By this, I should be dead. I'm also a terrible person for valuing life and being internally troubled by someone suicidal, partly because of personal identification. But, as the article asserts, you have no right to impose your values on someone else, and we can't fully understand all the nuances of why a person feels their life isn't worth living, so we can't, shouldn't "help" them. The cognitive dissonance is real. I know I've wanted help in those moments. I know a few people online who are glad they didn't follow through with suicidal thoughts, because things did get better...

Okay, tangent there - but the problem still stands for those mentally and emotionally troubled who want help, want a diagnosis. Diagnoses, according to these articles, are effectively insults, accusations of thought-crime for being abnormal (this kind of bugs me if we want to make the mental illness/physical illness. The author even alludes to it. I mean, the things we call mental illness rather obviously cause problems in people's lives, regardless of their cause. Might as well say that a medical diagnosis is accusing someone of having an abnormal body). Though the entire issue of force, I think, is a good one. Yes, that does sound like a problem, and something to be remedied. But it should be optional, the same way physical medical help is optional. That sounds logical... though it does bother me that someone who could have been helped should be allowed to die because of incomplete thinking or information...

Please discuss, I'd love to hear other thoughts here while I organize my own.