THE ANTIPSYCHIATRY CONTINUUM

Some practitioners have been publicly critical (and then ostracized) for their antispsychiatry views. In your readings, you have encountered Loren Mosher and Peter Breggin.  Recently, the Director of NIMH came out against the DSM V, saying that the organization should no longer fund research based upon DSM diagnostic categories. Some of the origins of the recovery movement / psychiatric survivor movement resulted from people with mental illness generating alternatives for themselves (e.g. Fountainhouse).

In my opinion, there seems there is a continuum of support for the medicalization of mental illness. One one end of the continuum there are anti-psychiatry folks like Breggin (who are totally opposed to using diagnoses AND medications), and some psychiatric survivors like Ted Chabasinski.  Others take more moderate approaches (Anthony, Deegan, Chamberlin) and may question the validity of diagnoses, but in general, don't object to the use of medication, if it is helpful for folks. they would be in the middle of the continuum.  On the other end of the spectrum are folks who take the recipe-book approach to diagnosis and treatment with medications, ECT, cingulotomy, and capsulotomy. "This diagnosis gets this treatment." These folks clearly see mental illness as a disease of the brain, a "chemical imbalance" that needs to be medicated or cured.

Not all psychiatric survivors are radically anti-psychiatry, and not all practitioners are pro psychiatry.  Do pro-recovery principles automatically qualify as anti-psychiatry? Can someones be pro-recovery AND pro medicalization/psychiatry? Or is this a false dichotomy?

Review the figure below. If you had to place Recovery on this continuum, where would you place it? Where do you think your beliefs fall on this continuum of "antipsychiatry?" Describe your rationale, then comment (respectfully) on at least one of your classmates' replies.