From Mad in Denmark: In Denmark, psychiatry is, broadly speaking, the only publicly funded system whose primary purpose is to help people experiencing psychological suffering. This means that, in practice, it is the only system a citizen suffering psychologically can enter if they want help from our shared social welfare system. We therefore have a systemic bottleneck that herds citizens into one particular framework of understanding — based on the idea of mental illness — and which often uses medical treatment to address alleged biological imbalances. Discussing the viability of this approach is not the purpose of this article — that has been done elsewhere several times before. Instead, we argue that it is problematic to leave psychiatry solely responsible for the mental health of all citizens, since this risks leaving suffering individuals alone with their suffering.
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