Wednesday, July 15, 2009

AN EASY QUESTION

Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz asks this in the WSJ:
Leukemia, lupus, prostate cancer, and many infectious diseases are unwanted happenings. Are we going to count obesity, smoking, depression and schizophrenia as the same kinds of diseases?

He seems to believe that depression and schizophrenia are the result of choices by individuals. The evidence for this claim is extrenely slim in both cases. Schizophrenia has a very strong genetic component and depression has a somewhat less strong genetic component.

3 comments:

patrick said...

This guy is very hostile to psychiatry and basically claims mental illness is a myth.
He has teamed up with the Church of Scientology against the mental health profession. (Remember Tom Cruise condemning psychiatry on the Today Show?)

Steve J. said...

I read his "Myth of Mental Illness" back in the 60s and it made some sense then. Szasz doesn't seem to have kept up with the research.

patrick said...

When I look at some of the far-right loons I know that mental illness is a reality, not a myth.