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‘Freedom is more important than health’: Thomas Szasz and the problem of paternalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Joanna Moncrieff
Joanna Moncrieff*
Affiliation:
Department of Mental Health Sciences, University College London, UK, email j.moncrieff@ucl.ac.uk
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Abstract

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When Thomas Szasz summed up his philosophical principles at the Royal College of Psychiatrists' annual meeting in Edinburgh in 2010, he declared that ‘freedom is more important than health’. Psychiatry is the arena in which the conflict between freedom and health comes most sharply into focus, according to Szasz. This paper proposes some parallels with medicine in low-income countries for pointers towards a resolution of this conflict.

Type
Special papers
Information
International Psychiatry , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , May 2014 , pp. 46 - 48
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists 2014

References

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