by Thomas Szasz

About the author: Thomas Szasz is the author of numerous books on psychiatry, including The Myth of Mental Illness and A Lexicon of Lunacy.

My aim in this viewpoint is to rebut the contemporary view that suicide is a mental health problem, that psychiatric practitioners and institutions have a professional duty to try to prevent it, and that it is a legitimate function of the state to empower such professionals and institutions—especially psychiatrists and mental hospitals—to impose coercive interventions on persons diagnosed as posing a suicidal risk. Because of these assumptions, should a person formally identified as a patient kill himself while in the care of a mental health clinician or clinic, the latter is likely to be sued for, and may be found guilty of, professional negligence for failing to prevent his suicide...