A movement or approach that criticizes or opposes conventional psychiatric practices and the medicalization of mental illness.
From anti- (against) + psychiatry (from Greek psyche, mind + iatreia, healing). The movement emerged in the 1960s-70s as intellectuals questioned whether psychiatry truly helped patients or served society's control.
Thinkers like R.D. Laing argued that psychiatric hospitals sometimes harmed rather than helped people, especially those with schizophrenia—raising uncomfortable questions about whether 'insanity' might sometimes be a rational response to an irrational world.
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