From Mad in the UK: Concepts of diagnosis and illness are fundamental to psychiatry. Challenge diagnosis, show that it lacks reliability and validity, show that its notion of mental illness lacks consistent biological correlates, and you threaten the whole of psychiatry. Reject diagnosis, refuse its categories, conceptualise distress in non-medical ways, and you reject psychiatry entirely. This is the view of many critics, including contributors to Mad in the World. For a long time, there has been a broad consensus that the converse is also true. Accept diagnosis, grant it legitimacy, use it or the medicalised notion of mental illness upon which it rests, and you reinforce psychiatry. If you endorse diagnosis, or accept its concept of mental illness, your critique of psychiatry will be at best superficial.
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