Dr Shorter’s ad hominem attack on Professor Szasz provides no convincing argument against Szasz’s well-known position concerning what he regards as the spurious medicalisation of mental illness. Nor will there be wide agreement with Shorter that neuroscientific studies suggesting a ‘neurological basis for much psychiatric illness’ negate Szasz’s firmly held beliefs.

It is regrettable that Dr Shorter missed the opportunity to remind our colleagues that the rampant misuse of psychiatry 50 years ago as described by Szasz is applicable to the way institutional psychiatry is practised today in many parts of the USA, Canada and the UK, and certainly in most of the other countries in the world.