Suicide Prohibition: The Shame of Medicine (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780815609902)

In Western thought, suicide has evolved from sin to sin-and-crime, to crime, to mental illness, and to semilegal act. A legal act is one we are free to think and speak about and plan and perform, without penalty by agents of the state.

While dying voluntarily is ostensibly legal, suicide attempts and even suicidal thoughts are routinely punished by incarceration in a psychiatric institution. Although many people believe the prevention of suicide is one of the duties the modern state owes its citizens, Szasz argues that suicide is a basic human right and that the lengths to which the medical industry goes to prevent it represent a deprivation of that right.

Drawing on his general theory of the myth of mental illness, Szasz makes a compelling case that the voluntary termination of one's own life is the result of a decision, not a disease. He presents an in-depth examination and critique of contemporary antisuicide policies, which are based on the notion that voluntary death is a mental health problem, and systematically lays out the dehumanizing consequences of psychiatrizing suicide prevention.

If suicide be deemed a problem, it is not a medical problem. Managing it as if it were a disease, or the result of a disease, will succeed only in debasing medicine and corrupting the law. Pretending to be the pride of medicine, psychiatry is its shame.

Author: Thomas Szasz
ISBN-10: 0815609906
ISBN-13: 9780815609902
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Language: English
Published: 10/12/2011
Pages: 148
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 8.87h x 5.77w x 0.65d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 05/01/2012
Reference and Research Bk News 12/01/2011 pg. 103