ABSTRACT
Beginning in the 1960s, many mental health professionals and social scientists provided extensive critiques of class, race, and sex biases in psychology and psychiatry. The essentially ahistorical and asocial view of mental health professionals toward individual mental illness allowed for a separation of emotional distress from its social causation. Patients’ rights and institutional change posed a complex conjuncture of social forces. Favorable court rulings on patients’ rights were definitely a product of the civil liberties upsurge of the period. Particularly important at present is the right to refuse treatment, which has been a major focus of patients’ rights activists. Forceful cooptation will attempt to break down the strong self-image of political activists, for such identity politics presents a major challenge to mainstream institutional practices and ideologies and the power of the professional establishment. A major complicating factor in the patients’ rights area is frequent opposition from state workers’ unions.
