Dr. Thomas Szasz to Present at International Mental Health Conference in Los Angeles

Sept. 28, 2011 - PRLog -- One of the featured speakers at ISEPP's annual conference is Thomas Szasz.

Dr. Szasz is perhaps the most celebrated of the powerful critics of mainstream psychiatry. His argument is that what we call "mental illness" is behavior that is scary, troubling and uncomfortable for us.

According to Szasz, when we see behavior that threatens our economic system, makes us feel guilty, puts pressure on us, threatens the people in power, we label it as a mental illness and use that label to disempower, lock up, ridicule and weaken the people who are exhibiting it. He likens what we do to "mentally ill" people to what the Catholic Church did to "heretics" during the Inquisition and to the witch burning that went on in this country in the 17th century.

Szasz is the author of The Myth of Mental Illness and Manufaturing Madness and many other books on the topic.

The conference is scheduled for October 28 and 29 in Los Angeles. To register go to

www.psychintegrity.org.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgikdLHaAcE



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The International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry is a nonprofit organization acting as a vast network of professionals and individuals concerned with the impact of mental health theories and practices.