Furthermore, it seems to be world that can still offer not only cures, but also destructive classifications and resultant miscalculations regarding prognosis and treatment. Szasz has offered us a compelling description of the crippling impact which the social construction of “illness” can have on individual people and a society. I close this essay with a final quote from Szasz (1974, p 262): “The notion of a person ‘having a mental illness’ is scientifically crippling. It provides professional assent to a popular rationalization—namely that problems in living experienced and expressed in terms of so-called psychiatric symptoms are basically similar to bodily diseases. For a society, it precludes regarding individuals as responsible persons and invites, instead, treating them as irresponsible patients.”
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References
Bergquist, William, Suzan Guest and Terrence Rooney (2004) Who is Wounding the Healers. Sacramento, CA: Pacific Soundings Press.
Szasz, Thomas (1974)The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct. New York: Harper & Row.
