December 2016
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558 Citations
In 1960, I coined the phrase “MYTH OF MENTAL ILLNESS” to identify the intrinsically metaphoric nature of the idea of mental illness, to alert the public to the dangers of viewing distressed and distressing behaviors as diseases, and to undermine the moral legitimacy of psychiatric excuses and coercions. The claim that mental illnesses do not exist was not intended to imply that distressing personal experiences and deviant behaviors do not exist. Anxiety and depression, conflict and crime exist, and indeed are intrinsic to the human condition. But they are not diseases. We classify them as diseases in order to medicalize (mis)behaviors to our profit or at our peril.