Implications of Critical Perspectives for Psychiatric Practice.

"Critical psychiatry" encompasses a diverse spectrum of critiques challenging foundational assumptions and practices within psychiatry, emphasizing the role of power, relational dynamics, and sociocultural contexts in understanding psychological distress and disability. We provide an overview of these topics relevant to medical ethics. Major themes explored here include critiques of biological reductionism, psychiatric classification and diagnosis, overmedicalization, models of psychopharmacology, iatrogenic harm, institutional corruption, and epistemic injustice. The article advocates for a critical vision of psychiatry that is pluralistic and integrative, recognizing the importance of empirical evidence from natural sciences while emphasizing sociopolitical determinants, pluralism, epistemic humility, and meaningful service-user participation.