The Continuing Relevance of Thomas Szasz

Half a century after Thomas Szasz first declared â??there is no such thing as â??mental illness,â??â??â? his radical critique of psychiatry is widely viewed as outmoded and simplistic at best, cruelly dogmatic at worst. â??The opinion of official American psychiatry,â? Szasz writes in the preface to the 50th anniversary edition of The Myth of Mental Illness, â??contains the imprimatur of the federal and state governments. There is no legally valid nonmedical approach to â??mental illness,â?? just as there is no such approach to measles or melanoma.â?¦Debate about what counts as mental illness has been replaced by legislation about the medicalization and demedicalization of behavior.â?