Mental Illness

The foremost question relating to mental illness concerns about its very existence - whether mental illness actually exists or not? According to Thomas Szasz, mental illness is a mere myth (Szasz, 1960) and does not exist, as illness can be defined only in terms of physical pathology and most mental disorders have no such demonstrable pathology. In a similar viewpoint, it was argued that biology was not relevant to the disorders of mind and behavior and such disorders could be fully understood from a sociological point-of-view. (Laing, 1960) Another theory is that some forms of mental disorders are the result of social incompetence and can be cured by social skills training. (Tower, Bryant and Argyle, 1978)

However, the medical profession holds the opposite view and is satisfied that mental illness does exist and is usually divided into two major groups - the psychoses and the neuroses. (Roth and...
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