Mental Illness Weaponry and Shrink Hypocrisy

In this piece for CounterPunch, Bruce Levine critiques the pervasive hypocrisy among U.S. mental health professionals, who on one hand claim they hope to abolish the stigma of mental illness, and on the other hand use mental health diagnoses to justify coercion and political ousting.

“The 2017 book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President and the current petition ‘Mental Health Professionals Declare Trump is Mentally Ill and Must Be Removed’ are embarrassments for politically astute authorities within psychiatry and psychology. Such politicos know that brandishing this diagnostic weaponry says loudly to the general public, ‘Yes, a mental illness diagnosis is a stigma that can be used against you.’ And the politically astute in the mental health profession know that while this weaponry gives the mental health profession its societal status, flaunting this weaponry might get more people to consider the hypocrisy behind mental health professionals’ promulgations to end the stigma of mental illness.”