Psychiatric Controversy

In the novel Everyone I Know is Mentally Ill, the Psychiatric Controversy is the series of debates, discussions, legal disputes, and sometimes even violent conflicts between the "psychers" and the anti-psychiatrists concerning the validity, legitimacy, and ethics of psychiatry. Anti-psychies accuse psychers of oppressing the citizens of Terra who think independently by diagnosing them with fictitious psychiatric disorders.
==Legitimacy of psychiatry==
===Is psychiatry really a scientific medicine?===
Anti-psychiatrists claim that psychiatry is not a scientific medicine, that is, it cannot be verified exactly. The mind cannot be observed directly; only behaviors can be observed. Thus, according to the anti-psychiatrists, psychiatry is pseudo-scientifically based. Ie proclaims, "Psychiatrists give themselves medicians' might according to what they believe about the mind and how they believe the mind is 'supposed' to function."
===What is a mental disorder?===
A mental disorder is defined in the Azhri Registry of Mental and Psychical Abnormalities as a "corruption or dysfunction of one or more mental faculties, resulting in irrational, antisocial, or violent behavior, or severe emotional distress, or false and unreasonable beliefs, false sensations, or abnormality in thought, personality, emotion, or behavior." Anti-psychiatrists state that minds operate according to their own laws and cannot be subject to science, in other words, people think and act in unique ways and such thoughts and actions are the result of their free will and their creativity. No one is mentally ill, they claim. Mental illness is merely a social illusion (or delusion). 
==Ethics of psychiatry==
In Terra, antipsychiatrists criticize the ethics of psychiatry, calling it deceptive and a greedy enterprise existing only to uphold the traditional norms of society. "Psychiatry does not help us," cries Alia, "It just turns all our strangest thoughts and feelings into 'disorders.' " Psychiatry is called "ever unethical and always immoral." 
==Effects of the controversy==
Because of the controversy, anti-psychiatrists are actively boycotting psychoactive "medications" and refusing "therapy." In many places, anti-psychiatrists are using the obsolete methods of warfare (physical force) to prevent the spread of psychiatry. Many Terran nations have demanded that anti-psychiatrists be treated immediately or burned to death. Some Terran regimes have prohibited the use of psychiatry within their borders.
Category:Terran psychiatry