Psychiatry’s Threat to Civil Liberties

Only one man can deprive the non-criminal of his freedom, warns the author, in a sober review of a dangerous trend in commitment procedures

When President Kennedy sent to the Congress early in February his message on mental illness, he drew attention to the size of the problem in economic terms: 600,000 Americans are in mental institutions (some experts say one in every ten Americans is mentally ill) ; half the hospital beds in the nation are for mental patients; billions of dollars are spent yearly for psychiatric services. But I do not propose to discuss mental illness as a threat to American society. Rather, I want to discuss modern psychiatry as a threat to traditional American liberties.

TS

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Thomas S. Szasz

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Only one man can deprive the non-criminal of his freedom, warns the author, in a sober review of a dangerous trend in commitment procedures

When President Kennedy sent to the Congress early in February his message on mental illness, he drew attention to the size of the problem in economic terms: 600,000 Americans are in mental institutions (some experts say one in every ten Americans is mentally ill) ; half the hospital beds in the nation are for mental patients; billions of dollars are spent yearly for psychiatric services. But I do not propose to discuss mental illness as a threat to American society. Rather, I want to discuss modern psychiatry as a threat to traditional American liberties.