Hoax is a very strong word

I wouldn't call psychiatry a hoax. I would only call it a pseudo-science.

When it prescribes a chemically active substance in order to alter mental function through its biochemical effects in the brain, in reaction to a patient's symptoms and complaints, then it is simply a part of neurology. It does have scientific status at that point, but it is superfluous vis-à-vis neurology.

When it does anything else that is not backed by empirically testable and tested brain chemistry research, then it is simply not science. Usually it is a form of social control. But even when or where it isn't, the status of its theories remains outside the scope of science due to their non-empirical and often unfalsifiable character.

You are committing a very common mistake. You are assuming that because some things, like hallucinations and some cases of depression, as in your examples (my favorite though, like Szasz's too, is dementia - though he used syphilis dementia more, while I think for the modern world Alzheimer is a better example) are valid organic diseases which have an empirically testable profile, that then all things that psychiatrists describe as diseases truly are diseases (Some go so far as to assume that the organic aetiologies and profiles are simply not-yet discovered, using examples from the past like epilepsy.) But in as much as a condition is empirically testable, it is not "mental" but organic; and in as much as it is mental rather than organic, applying to it the word "disease" is a value judgment, not a medical statement, and it belongs in philosophy, not in science.

This doesn't mean that the free association of a patient and a therapist is always, inherently, useless or worse. Only that it has no scientific status.