Antipsychiatry Movement

[Page 57]This entry briefly describes and outlines the antipsychiatry movement, an amorphous movement that is highly critical of some of the currents and trends in psychiatry mentioned earlier. The entry starts by giving a brief overview of psychiatry as a medical specialty, examining trends and current issues therein. It then describes and analyzes the antipsychiatry movement, detailing the specific critiques of psychiatry by those involved in the movement. Many of these critiques relate to issues of security and surveillance. These include arguments that psychiatry overuses interventions such as medication, forced treatments, and compulsory hospitalization as a form of control and containment of those whom society marks out as deviant or nonconformist.