April 14, 2000

'Of Two Minds: The Growing Disorder in American Psychiatry'

By NINA C. AYOUB

John Hood's thoughts are his own. He claims them. That he's been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic changes little. Mr. Hood, an activist for the mentally ill, acknowledges that he has an organic problem, writes T.M. Luhrmann. He knows he needs medication. But he rejects the biomedical or disease model of mental illness, because "he wants to think of himself as responsible for his choices, his ideas, his writing, his political work."

How society sees the mentally ill matters, writes