ABSTRACT
Since the late 1950s, one of the most striking features of the published literature on mental health is the plethora of books and articles which challenge the assumptions of mainstream medical psychiatry and clinical psychology. Two of the best known generalized critiques of psychiatry are those associated with Thomas Szasz and Ronald David Laing (see Clare, 1976). However, there are other perspectives which are at least equally significant. These include: Michel Foucault’s influential, but historically inaccurate, account of the confinement of mentally distressed people and the emergence of medical psychiatry; the labelling theory perspective associated with Thomas Scheff; later work by former colleagues of Laing and others associated with the Philadelphia and Arbours Associations; anti-racist psychiatry; feminist critiques of psychiatry; the radical anti-therapy perspectives associated with Peter Breggin and Jeffrey Masson; and autobiographical accounts of mental health services by users and ex-users of those services. One theme common to these perspectives is that to varying degrees and in a variety of different ways they all take issue with theoretical perspectives associated with medical psychiatry and/or mainstream clinical psychology and with the socio-legal power which psychiatrists have in many countries of the world.
