Critics and dissenters: reflections on "anti-psychiatry" in the United States

J Hist Behav Sci. 1989 Jan;25(1):3-25. doi: 10.1002/1520-6696(198901)25:1<3::aid-jhbs2300250102>3.0.co;2-g.

Abstract

During the 1970s various professionals and social activists adopted an explicitly anti-psychiatry position which was perceived by many as a new phenomenon. Hostility to psychiatry actually predates the establishment of psychiatry as a profession in 1844, and organized opposition to psychiatric practices appeared in the late nineteenth century. The deinstitutionalization of the 1970s, which was aided by development within psychiatry, had a strong anti-psychiatry component, but the novel aspect was the organization of ex-mental patients themselves. By the 1980s the decline of psychiatric power, dissension among ex-patients, and new social trends vitiated the anti-psychiatry movement.

Publication types

  • Historical Article
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Deinstitutionalization / history
  • History, 20th Century
  • Hospitals, Psychiatric / history
  • Humans
  • Patient Advocacy / history
  • Psychiatry / history*
  • United States