The Noonday Demon

by Andrew Solomon

Thomas Szasz, an influential critic of the mental health establishment who has favored limiting the power of psychiatrists, says, “Suicide is a fundamental human right. This does not mean that it is desirable. It only means that society does not have the moral right to interfere, by force, with a person’s decision to commit this act.” Szasz believes that by intervening forcibly with the suicidal, one deprives them of the legitimacy of their selves and actions. “The result is a far-reaching infantilization and dehumanization of the suicidal person.” A Harvard study gave doctors edited case histories of suicides and asked them for diagnoses; while the doctors diagnosed mental illness in only 22 percent of the group if they were not told that the patients had committed suicide, the figure was 90 percent when the suicide was included in the patient profile. Clearly, suicidality creates a smooth diagnosis, and it is likely that some degree of infantilization—or at least paternalism—occurs.