This thesis presents a critical analysis of the limitation and weakness of the concept of mental illness and proposes the Reactive Functional Disorder (RFD) approach as an alternative moral perspective on mental illness. Chapter one highlights, through an analysis of the problems of psychiatric treatment in Kuwait, the vulnerability of the concept of mental illness to abuse. In Chapter two, it is argued that the current definitional systems used in psychiatry have contributed to the vulnerability of the concept of mental illness to abuse by employing definitions which are terminologically, clinically, and morally weak. In Chapter three, the RFD approach is presented in the hope that this account might provide a deeper understanding of the moral and conceptual implications of the concept of mental illness. Chapter four provides an analysis of some of the writings of Thomas Szasz, the controversial American psychiatrist, who argues consistently that mental illness is a myth and psychiatry is unlike other well-established medical disciplines. It is argued that Dr. Szasz, in reality, is less against psychiatry than against psychiatric coercion and involuntary hospitalisation.