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Glite Dictionary
🚫 Critical of psychiatry 🚫 Opposing psychiatry
antipsychiatry

antipsychiatry

8.9
A movement that opposes the usual methods doctors use to treat mental illness
  • noun
  • /ˌæntiˈsaɪkətri/
translation icon : antipsiquiatría
  • Others follow the reasoning of R.D. Laing and his radical antipsychiatry movement of earlier decades.

Examples

  • This common error has long bedeviled the antipsychiatry movement and its apologists, such as R. D. Laing and Thomas Szasz, who blurred the distinctions between madness and transcendence.

    Academic text (1994)

  • This idea has a long history relating to social control theory and general antipsychiatry criticism, which frames the science of the mind as a means of controlling non-conforming or deviant people.

    Academic text (2014)

  • The antipsychiatry movement challenges conventional methods and encourages alternative approaches to mental health care.

  • Many advocates of antipsychiatry criticize the reliance on medication as a primary treatment for mental illness.

  • The discussion surrounding antipsychiatry often revolves around the ethics of labeling and treating mental health conditions.

Surface Forms

antipsychiatry singular
antipsychiatries plural

Morphology

antipsychiatry = psychiatry (transparent) = anti + psychiatry

This is a transparent prefixed form meaning opposition to psychiatry and its methods.

Etymology

Antipsychiatry combines anti- ('against') with psyche ('mind') and -iatry ('healing'), a combination you can recognise in psychiatry and psychology. So antipsychiatry is the name for a movement or set of ideas that is 'against' traditional psychiatric practices.