Abstract: The author of the present thesis attempts to explore the implications of the Antipsychiatry Movement and its practice since 1950, as regards the publicness and its realization of mental health in the modern society, and elaborate the historical motivation for the aforementioned publicness. Through the evaluation of the social and political background of the Minority Groups’struggle for Civil Rights in the 1950s, a review has been initiated of the publicness of mental health in the context of AntiPsychiatry Movement, which as against the traditional psychiatric crisis, treats patients of mental disorder as subjects in the psychiatric sphere. In other words, when the traditional psychiatry leads to nowhere, the criticism of“total institution”and the Labeling Theory has become the driving force of Deinstitutionalization. The Groupe Information Asiles (GIA) as the voluntary grassroots organization has revolutionized the social care in respect of mental disorder. In Italy, Basaglia’s mental health reform has rehabilitated and released the inmates from the institutions, and thus has ensured their rights of citizenship through the Basaglia Law as well as the disestablishment of psychiatric hospitals. It follows that the historical facts in review would facilitate the construal of the publicness of mental health, including the openness of the mental health service provided with the promotion of public participation as well as the establishment of legal perimeters for mental health, among which, however, the most urgent task is to ensure the inmates as subjects through the maintenance of civic spirit and values. The author concludes with a reinterpretation of the objectives and value orientation of the publicness of mental health, the public participation into the reform of mental health system, and the historical process of the progressive in human rights and legislative reform.

Key words: Anti-psychiatry, deinstitutionalization, mental health, Publicness, Basaglia