Being a graduate from 3 years of studying psych and with an active experience of mental illness, I can say that no amount of studying theory and doing therapy+ taking meds for years helped me realize the root of my problems and my worth as a human. more than Marxist analysis. I live to be a part of the revolution, and as long as psychotherapy reinforces the client to believe in themselves and to accept the realities of it is what it is, it will never achieve its job of liberating the person. There is a need for psychology to gain a Marxist perspective, more so from modern day leftists in the mental health field.
Oh well, Lemmygrad has taken a like not to notify me of replies to my posts so I missed yours until now.
I am not American, and thus I usually refuse to center the focus of conversations into the shape that capitalism particularly takes in the USA for its population and instead attempt to address capitalism globally, thus I will not go on into the form of healthcare that the US has in particular.
That being said: it is indeed a conversation to have. But I will add: it is a conversation to have with an important amount of investigation and research done previously. Issues regarding healthcare and the ways it can improve can, without a relative amount of education, easily deviate into anti-science discourse, with people identifying correctly the grasp that capitalism has into healthcare and its transformation to serve its own interests but, as a solution, decidint to proclaim instead psychiatry to be a “false science” that exists purely to control the population and generate profit with it.
Science is not immune to the material conditions of the society it exists in. Biology, and more specifically genetics was used once to legitimize colonialism because that was the world it existed in, but I doubt anyone with half a brain would consider that the world would be doing better if biology as a science did not exist due to its history. The same happens in medicine, including the field of mental health, with events such as the ones that the DSM has seen and that you have pointed out.
The point I am trying to make is simple: the existance of psychiatry under capitalism, despite its many faults, is still more benefitial to proletarians than it would be its non-existance. Psychiatry in particular and science in general must be seen not as willing servants of capital, but as its hostages.