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Szasz's opinions on addiction and 'the therapeutic state' were some of the most clear of any from the field of psychiatry I've heard yet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Szasz#Szasz's_main_argu...

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This is fine as far as it goes, but some psychotic people really are dangerous. A percentage become murderous and violent, and criticising the admittedly poor state of psychiatric understanding doesn't make them less likely to harm themselves or others.

Of course the problem is related to wider social issues about permissive violence. If one person murders another because of their delusions, it's a crime and a medical failure. If an entire country declares war on another for similar reasons we assume we're in the realm of politics and history, not mass mental illness.

We're far too harsh on individuals and far too lenient on mass systems of thought and belief that have horrific outcomes.

>This is fine as far as it goes, but some psychotic people really are dangerous. A percentage become murderous and violent

Sure, but then again most non-psychotic people are as well. It's not like the majority of murders is done by psychotic people.

In fact, those with psychotic disorders are far more likely to be VICTIMS of violence than perpetrators. Psychosis comes in a wide variety of flavors. I have a psychotic disorder and have occasional psychotic episodes. It feels like my brain is short circuiting and my thoughts become too rapid fire and disorganized for me to do anything but stare into space and just ride it out and go to bed. Its pretty frightening to feel like you've lost control of your own brain like that if you don't know what's happening. About once a year or so I'll have a paranoid episode, I just get really combative and accusatory and start trying to pick (text, verbal) fights with my friends but fortunately it's so out of character for me that everybody can tell something is wrong. The next morning I'll wake up just fine and dandy like it never happened, minus feeling really embarrassed and apologizing profusely to whoever I was trying to pick fights with.

>If one person murders another because of their delusions, it's a crime and a medical failure. If an entire country declares war on another for similar reasons we assume we're in the realm of politics and history, not mass mental illness.

That's because mental illness diagnosis is subjective and authoritarian.

For example, runaway slaves in the US were diagnosed with drapetomania, and anti-war acitivists who smoked marijuana were diagnosed with schizophrenia.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drapetomania

A lot of this echoes Foucault. You might find his work interesting.

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