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Original Articles

Psychiatry and the Control of Dangerousness

On the Apotropaic Function of the Term “Mental Illness”

Pages 375-381 | Published online: 18 Feb 2014
 

Abstract

The term “mental illness” implies that persons with such illnesses are more likely to be dangerous to themselves and/or others than are persons without such illnesses. This is the source of the psychiatrist’s traditional social obligation to control “harm to self and/or others,” that is, suicide and crime. The ethical dilemmas of psychiatry cannot be resolved as long as the contradictory functions of healing persons and protecting society are united in a single discipline.

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