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"Thank you, Professor Szasz"
January 8, 2004 -- MindFreedom reports that the British Medical Journal has published an article by psychiatrist Thomas Szasz calling for legally enforceable psychiatric protection orders, and urges its members and allies to read and contribute to the discussion about the article at the BMJ website. The article, "The psychiatric protection order for the "battered mental patient," appears in the Dec. 20 edition of the BMJ. "Thank you, Professor Szasz," says David Oaks, MindFreedom's Director, "for being one of the few professionals willing to speak out." Oaks also commends the "organization of dissident professionals, the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology , for their own independent work in breaking the silence about these human rights violations." Szasz reviews the history of psychiatric coercion in the British and American systems. He notes that psychiatric advance directives are respected when they authorize forced treatment but not when they reject it; and he draws parallels with other, now outdated, systems in which people were unable to break free of abusive relationships. At one time, he points out, children who were abused by their parents had no protection; at one time, wives who were abused by their husbands had no recourse. We object when, in other countries, women and children have no way out of abusive relationships; but there is strong support for psychiatric patients having no way out of abusive relationships with psychiatrists. Today in the West, says Szasz, there is recognition that families are not only sources of love and support: for some family members, they are also the source of danger. But despite this, when family members of psychiatric patients work to apply and expand the laws authorizing the use of force, their actions are widely accepted as a form of care and protection. Psychiatric patients and former patients who regard forced treatment as a form of abuse and their allies don't see it that way. But because of the dominance of groups like the National Alliance of the Mentally Ill -- a "powerful lobby," Szasz says, in the control of relatives who support coercion rather than the individuals who protest the coercion that has been used against them -- and the medicalized perspective society usually takes the side of the people who exercise force, not the people at the blunt end of the psychiatric system. Protection orders have helped to protect people who have been victimized by others, says Szasz, and it's time to extend that protection to psychiatric patients. "As well as a world-famous author and professor, Tom [Szasz] is also a member of MindFreedom," says Oaks; and MindFreedom members today have reason to be glad that he is. Posted Jan. 8, 2004
Cal Montgomery writes frequently for Ragged Edge.
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