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Medical incapacity, legal incompetence and psychiatry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Thomas Szasz
Thomas Szasz*
Affiliation:
SUNY Health Science Center, 750 East Adams Street, Syracuse, NY 13210
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Much of my professional career has been dedicated to showing that psychiatric coercions and excuses are incompatible with respect for individual liberty and responsibility (Szasz, 1961, 1997). Thus, I was both pleased and displeased to read the criticisms of mental health legislation by Zigmond (1998) and Szmukler & Holloway (1998). It is gratifying to see such views appear in the pages of so respected a publication as the Psychiatric Bulletin, the more so as no American psychiatric journal exhibits similar open-mindedness toward debating a subject that most psychiatrists consider taboo. At the same time, it is frustrating to see psychiatrists grappling with problems intrinsic to psychiatry's legal and social mandate, yet refusing to acknowledge the nature and implications of that mandate.

Type
Review Articles
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 23 , Issue 9: The Journal of Trends in Psychiatric Practice , September 1999 , pp. 517 - 519
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

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