Worth remembering - drugs never cause behaviours, nor does lack of drugs

               "The view that mental illness causes murder and suicide, and the view that drugs used to treat mental illness cause such behaviours, are both false. One excuses the actor from responsibility by blaming his behaviour on psychiatric diseases, the other excuses him from responsibility by blaming his behaviour on psychiatric treatments. Both contentions are claims serving the claimants' medical, legal and economic interests. And both claims bolster psychiatric slavery, based equally on the insanity defense and on civil commitment. Promoting psychiatric excuses, like promoting psychiatric coercions, does not weaken psychiatric slavery, it strengthens it.
              I maintain that mental illness is part of a person's identity or self, not a disease apart from him. If a mental patient is dangerous - if he assaults and kills another person, or mutilates or kills himself - it is not because of a mental disease he allegedly has, nor because of a drug he takes or does not take, but because of who he is and what he decides."

Thomas Szasz, 2002.

It is worth remembering this truth as we wade through torrents of web reports that x,y,z drug "caused" x,y,z behaviour, from organisations and individuals that are supposedly sceptical of psychiatry and that oppose psychiatric coercion and psychiatric slavery.

Neither drugs nor the lack of drugs cause behaviours. Saying that they do can effectively serve to endorse psychiatry.

Two plus two equals four.

"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. If that is granted, all else follows."

George Orwell.

"The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it."

George Orwell.

Widely held opinions

"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible."

Bertrand Russell.

Quotes

"The potential violence of a few clearly does not justify the actual violence of the many. Yet this is the justification we now invoke in the name of mental health, just as we had invoked it formerly in the name of Christianity."

Professor Thomas Szasz.

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for their good of its victims may be the most oppressive."

C.S. Lewis

Socialism and Psychiatry.

Some comments on the recent book "Politics of the Mind: Marxism and Mental Distress" by Iain Ferguson.

"Simply stated, the central argument of this book is that it is the economic and political system under which we live - capitalism - which is responsible for the enormously high levels of mental health problems which we see in the world today." Iain Ferguson.

Simply stated, the "enormously high levels of mental health problems" is caused by the erroneous and oppressive belief that they exist.
Simply stated, the radical truth that we all need to recognize is that the belief in "mental illness" and "mental health" is part of a serious intellectual and cultural mistake.
Psychiatry is the pseudo-science that is based on this serious mistake.
Psychiatry is the basis for a state-backed system of poisoning, stigmatization, oppression and enslavement.

"... in a different kind of society, a society not based on exploitation and oppression but on equality and democratic control - a socialist society - levels of mental distress would be far lower." Iain Ferguson.

I agree with this.
I too believe in a free and socialist society.
But I believe that a truly liberated society is one free of the lies and oppression of psychiatry.
The only society in which there would be no so-called "mental illness" is a society free from the scourge of psychiatry, and free from a culture of belief in "mental illness" and "mental health".
It would seem that we have a long way to go, but the struggle against psychiatry is part of the struggle against the authoritarian state and the capitalist economy to which it is linked.
It is part of the struggle to freely create a different kind of society.

Were such a society created, mental distress would not disappear as Ferguson acknowledges. Mental distress is a part of the human condition. But "mental illness" will only disappear when we fully realize that it does not exist. This will involve the abolition of psychiatry as a powerful institution.

Szasz was a libertarian as this book says. It is probably wrong to characterize him as "right-wing", however. His supreme critique of psychiatry is not engaged with in this book. Its dismissal is a mistake.
Like Szasz and like Karl Marx, I am not a Marxist. I don't really think that Marxism has much to say about this issue.
But socialism is opposed to slavery and oppression, and psychiatric slavery and psychiatric oppression are widespread and grim realities for victims of psychiatry across the world.
All true socialists should struggle against psychiatry.

.......

If Karl Marx was alive today I am sure he would oppose the inherent injustices of psychiatry and fight psychiatric slavery. I feel sure he would be anti-Psychiatry.
Marx believed in freedom and justice without a shadow of a doubt.