I think it's even more frightening than that. As a sociopolitical program, mass-diagnosing and mass-medicating nonconformists to tone down their nonconformity is one of the basic premises of Brave New World.
The ability to delegitimize an individual's arguments by labeling his point of view a "disease" is a power accorded only to mental health professionals, and the closest historical analogs are the labels of "anti-American", "counter-revolutionary" and "heretic" (and now, maybe, "terrorist"). What these labels have in common is that they not only confer on the authorities the public's blessing to treat or re-educate the non-conformist, they also carry a freight of social stigma and fear of open association that's sufficient to scare other people away from openly sympathizing with the now-isolated individual - making it impossible to determine from that point forward whether the charges were accurate, or if the individual was targeted solely for being anti-authoritarian. In fact, making an example of one non-conformist pays dividends for the authorities running the inquisition, by cowing the rest of the population further into submission, while forcing the most vehement of the other non-conformists to expose themselves in defense of whatever is said to be "indefensible". As counter-revolutionary thought was considered contagious under Mao and Stalin, and as people were terrified to even ask where their relatives had disappeared under Pinochet, so defending a non-compliant individual becomes socially unacceptable once the labels and drugs have been applied. There's no reason to think this principle doesn't operate at the level of psychiatrist and patient, since that relationship (other than the individual's relationship to mass culture through television) is exactly where most people with the financial means to effectively contest authority are actually presented with ideas of what constitutes "healthy" conformist and consumerist behavior.
The ability to delegitimize an individual's arguments by labeling his point of view a "disease" is a power accorded only to mental health professionals, and the closest historical analogs are the labels of "anti-American", "counter-revolutionary" and "heretic" (and now, maybe, "terrorist"). What these labels have in common is that they not only confer on the authorities the public's blessing to treat or re-educate the non-conformist, they also carry a freight of social stigma and fear of open association that's sufficient to scare other people away from openly sympathizing with the now-isolated individual - making it impossible to determine from that point forward whether the charges were accurate, or if the individual was targeted solely for being anti-authoritarian. In fact, making an example of one non-conformist pays dividends for the authorities running the inquisition, by cowing the rest of the population further into submission, while forcing the most vehement of the other non-conformists to expose themselves in defense of whatever is said to be "indefensible". As counter-revolutionary thought was considered contagious under Mao and Stalin, and as people were terrified to even ask where their relatives had disappeared under Pinochet, so defending a non-compliant individual becomes socially unacceptable once the labels and drugs have been applied. There's no reason to think this principle doesn't operate at the level of psychiatrist and patient, since that relationship (other than the individual's relationship to mass culture through television) is exactly where most people with the financial means to effectively contest authority are actually presented with ideas of what constitutes "healthy" conformist and consumerist behavior.