Download or read book Mad in America written by Robert Whitaker and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An updated edition of the classic history of schizophrenia in America, which gives voice to generations of patients who suffered through "cures" that only deepened their suffering and impaired their hope of recovery Schizophrenics in the United States currently fare worse than patients in the world's poorest countries. In Mad in America, medical journalist Robert Whitaker argues that modern treatments for the severely mentally ill are just old medicine in new bottles, and that we as a society are deeply deluded about their efficacy. The widespread use of lobotomies in the 1920s and 1930s gave way in the 1950s to electroshock and a wave of new drugs. In what is perhaps Whitaker's most damning revelation, Mad in America examines how drug companies in the 1980s and 1990s skewed their studies to prove that new antipsychotic drugs were more effective than the old, while keeping patients in the dark about dangerous side effects. A haunting, deeply compassionate book -- updated with a new introduction and prologue bringing in the latest medical treatments and trends -- Mad in America raises important questions about our obligations to the mad, the meaning of "insanity," and what we value most about the human mind.
Download or read book Anatomy of an Epidemic written by Robert Whitaker and published by Crown. This book was released on 2010-04-13 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Updated with bonus material, including a new foreword and afterword with new research, this New York Times bestseller is essential reading for a time when mental health is constantly in the news. In this astonishing and startling book, award-winning science and history writer Robert Whitaker investigates a medical mystery: Why has the number of disabled mentally ill in the United States tripled over the past two decades? Interwoven with Whitaker’s groundbreaking analysis of the merits of psychiatric medications are the personal stories of children and adults swept up in this epidemic. As Anatomy of an Epidemic reveals, other societies have begun to alter their use of psychiatric medications and are now reporting much improved outcomes . . . so why can’t such change happen here in the United States? Why have the results from these long-term studies—all of which point to the same startling conclusion—been kept from the public? Our nation has been hit by an epidemic of disabling mental illness, and yet, as Anatomy of an Epidemic reveals, the medical blueprints for curbing that epidemic have already been drawn up. Praise for Anatomy of an Epidemic “The timing of Robert Whitaker’s Anatomy of an Epidemic, a comprehensive and highly readable history of psychiatry in the United States, couldn’t be better.”—Salon “Anatomy of an Epidemic offers some answers, charting controversial ground with mystery-novel pacing.”—TIME “Lucid, pointed and important, Anatomy of an Epidemic should be required reading for anyone considering extended use of psychiatric medicine. Whitaker is at the height of his powers.” —Greg Critser, author of Generation Rx
Download or read book Madness in America written by Lynn Gamwell and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this book, Lynn Gamwell and Nancy Tomes explore the historical roots of Americans' understanding of madness today. Drawing on a rich array of sources, the authors interweave the perceptions of medical practitioners, the mentally ill and their families, and journalists, poets, novelists, and artists. As they trace successive ways of explaining madness and treating those judged insane, Gamwell and Tomes vividly depict the political and cultural dimensions of American attitudes toward mental illness." "Gamwell and Tomes observe telling differences in the ways in which patients of different genders, races, and classes have been diagnosed and treated. The authors demonstrate how definitions of madness figured in national debates over abolitionism, women's rights, and alternative medicine. Madness in America also considers how the boundaries between sanity and insanity have been repeatedly redrawn in such areas as sexual behavior and criminality."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Download or read book Psychiatry Under the Influence written by R. Whitaker and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-04-23 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Psychiatry Under the Influence investigates the actions and practices of the American Psychiatric Association and academic psychiatry in the United States, and presents it as a case study of institutional corruption.
Download or read book Mental Health Survival Kit and Withdrawal from Psychiatric Drugs written by Peter C. Gøtzsche and published by Institute for Scientific Freedom. This book was released on 2021-12-06 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book can help people with mental health issues to survive and return to a normal life. Citizens believe, and the science shows, that medications for depression and psychosis and admission to a psychiatric ward are more often harmful than beneficial. Yet most patients take psychiatric drugs for years. Doctors have made hundreds of millions of patients dependent on psychiatric drugs without knowing how to help them taper off the drugs safely, which can be very difficult. The book explains in detail how harmful psychiatric drugs are and gives detailed advice about how to come off them. You will learn: • why you should not see a psychiatrist if you have a mental health issue • that psychiatric drugs are addictive • that the biggest lie in psychiatry is the one about a chemical imbalance being the cause of psychiatric disorders • that psychiatric diagnoses are unscientific and that doctors disagree widely when making diagnoses • that psychiatric drugs can lead to permanent brain damage • that psychiatric drugs should never be stopped abruptly because withdrawal reactions can be dangerous • why psychotherapy and other psychosocial interventions should be preferred over drugs • why you should generally not believe what doctors tell you about psychiatric disorders and their treatment • why volunteers have found the book so important that they have translated it into French, Portuguese and Spanish "Peter Gøtzsche has written a very personal account of his battle to get the institution of psychiatry to accept that its drugs are not the 'magic pills' they are made out to be. Every medical practitioner who prescribes them, and every person who takes them, should read this book and be warned." -- Niall McLaren, author of Anxiety: The Inside Story "Peter Gøtzsche's new book meets patients' need to get tools on how to deal with psychoactive drugs and, above all, not to start them. Gøtzsche is very clear about the role of GPs in medicalizing grief, misfortune, opposition, and bad luck. In this he finds the American emeritus professor of psychiatry and chairman of the DSM-III committee, Allen Frances, at his side. Both Gøtzsche and Frances have repeatedly stated that psychoactive drugs should not be prescribed by GPs because they lack experience in their use. And above all, unhappiness, grief, and bad luck are not signs of brain disorders, they belong to daily life." Additionally, Gøtzsche reveals that most psychoactive drugs do not work - 'they might only achieve statistically significant differences compared to placebo, but that's not what patients need.'" -- Dick Bijl, former GP, epidemiologist, and current president of the International Society of Drug Bulletins. "Peter C. Gøtzsche wrote this book to help people with mental health problems survive and return to a normal life. His book explains in detail how psychiatric drugs are harmful and people are told how they can safely withdraw from them. It also advises on how people with mental health problems can avoid making a 'career' as a psychiatric patient and losing 10 or 15 years of their life to psychiatry. You will find precious material to help plan and accompany this process of liberation from psychiatry." - Fernando Freitas, PhD, Psychologist, Full Professor and Researcher at the National School of Public Health (ENSP/FIOCRUZ). Co-editor of Mad in Brazil "In this work, addressed to people affected by the risk of being caught in the system of attention to mental health issues, Dr. Gøtzsche succinctly exposes, without beating about the bush, the damage caused by psychiatric medications, demonstrates that their widespread use is not based on evidence, which is mainly driven by commercial pressures that have nothing to do with the recovery of patients, and present safe ways to dispose of them, always gradually and under supervision of trustworthy people to minimize the syndrome of abstinence and successfully overcome all the difficulties that the process involves." -- Enric García Torrents, writing for Mad in Spain Learn more at www.scientificfreedom.dk From the Institute for Scientific Freedom
Download or read book The Shame of the States written by Albert Deutsch and published by . This book was released on 1948 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Expose on the deplorable conditions in state mental hospitals, including overcrowding, understaffing, inadequate budgets, lack of adequate treatment facilities, etc. It consists mostly of pieces written for the New York newspaper PM and its successor the Star, as well as some less journalistic content, written from 1940-1948.
Download or read book Madness written by Mary de Young and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Madness" is, of course, personally experienced, but because of its intimate relationship to the sociocultural context, it is also socially constructed, culturally represented and socially controlled--all of which make it a topic rife for sociological analysis. Using a range of historical and contemporary textual material, this work exercises the sociological imagination to explore some of the most perplexing questions in the history of madness, including why some behaviors, thoughts and emotions are labeled mad while others are not; why they are labeled mad in one historical period and not another; why the label of mad is applied to some types of people and not others; by whom the label is applied, and with what consequences.
Download or read book Mad Science written by Stuart A. Kirk and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 2013-04-04 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When it comes to understanding and treating madness, distortions of research are not rare, misinterpretation of data is not isolated, and bogus claims of success are not voiced by isolated researchers seeking aggrandizement. This book's detailed analyses of coercion and community treatment, diagnosis, and psychopharmacology reveals that these characteristics of bad science are endemic, institutional, and protected in psychiatry. This is mad science. Mad Science argues that the fundamental claims of modern American psychiatry are not based on convincing research, but on misconceived, flawed, and distorted science. The authors address multiple paradoxes in American mental health, including the remaking of coercion into scientific psychiatric treatment in the community, the adoption of an unscientific diagnostic system that now controls the distribution of services, and how drug treatments have failed to improve the mental health outcome. This book provides an engaging and readable scientific and social critique of current mental health practices. The authors are scholars, researchers, and clinicians who have written extensively about community care, diagnosis, and psychoactive drugs. Mad Science is a must read for all specialists in the field as well as for the informed public.
Download or read book Crazy Like Us written by Ethan Watters and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-01-12 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A blistering and truly original work of reporting and analysis, uncovering America’s role in homogenizing how the world defines wellness and healing” (Po Bronson). In Crazy Like Us, Ethan Watters reveals that the most devastating consequence of the spread of American culture has not been our golden arches or our bomb craters but our bulldozing of the human psyche itself: We are in the process of homogenizing the way the world goes mad. It is well known that American culture is a dominant force at home and abroad; our exportation of everything from movies to junk food is a well-documented phenomenon. But is it possible America's most troubling impact on the globalizing world has yet to be accounted for? American-style depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and anorexia have begun to spread around the world like contagions, and the virus is us. Traveling from Hong Kong to Sri Lanka to Zanzibar to Japan, acclaimed journalist Ethan Watters witnesses firsthand how Western healers often steamroll indigenous expressions of mental health and madness and replace them with our own. In teaching the rest of the world to think like us, we have been homogenizing the way the world goes mad.
Download or read book Evidence biased Antidepressant Prescription written by Michael P. Hengartner and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-12-09 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the over-prescribing of antidepressants in people with mostly mild and subthreshold depression. It outlines the steep increase in antidepressant prescription and critically examines the current scientific evidence on the efficacy and safety of antidepressants in depression. The book is not only concerned with the conflicting views as to whether antidepressants are useful or ineffective in various forms of depression, but also aims at detailing how flaws in the conduct and reporting of antidepressant trials have led to an overestimation of benefits and underestimation of harms. The transformation of the diagnostic concept of depression from a rare but serious disorder to an over-inclusive, highly prevalent but predominantly mild and self-limiting disorder is central to the books argument. It maintains that biological reductionism in psychiatry and pharmaceutical marketing reframed depression as a brain disorder, corroborating the overemphasis on drug treatment in both research and practice. Finally, the author goes on to explore how pharmaceutical companies have distorted the scientific literature on the efficacy and safety of antidepressants and how patient advocacy groups, leading academics, and medical organisations with pervasive financial ties to the industry helped to promote systematically biased benefit-harm evaluations, affecting public attitudes towards antidepressants as well as medical education, training, and practice.
Download or read book Psychiatric Hegemony written by Bruce M. Z. Cohen and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-11-21 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a comprehensive Marxist critique of the business of mental health, demonstrating how the prerogatives of neoliberal capitalism for productive, self-governing citizens have allowed the discourse on mental illness to expand beyond the psychiatric institution into many previously untouched areas of public and private life including the home, school and the workplace. Through historical and contemporary analysis of psy-professional knowledge-claims and practices, Bruce Cohen shows how the extension of psychiatric authority can only be fully comprehended through the systematic theorising of power relations within capitalist society. From schizophrenia and hysteria to Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder, from spinning chairs and lobotomies to shock treatment and antidepressants, from the incarceration of working class women in the nineteenth century to the torture of prisoners of the ‘war on terror’ in the twenty-first, Psychiatric Hegemony is an uncompromising account of mental health ideology in neoliberal society.
Download or read book Gender Madness in American Psychiatry written by Kelley Winters and published by Booksurge Publishing. This book was released on 2009-01-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than three decades after the American Psychiatric Association voted to remove the classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder, those who do not conform to their assigned birth-sex, either by inner identity or outer social expression, are labeled mentally ill in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) with grave consequences to their human dignity, civil liberties and, for transsexual individuals, access to medical transition procedures. Gender Madness in American Psychiatry: Essays from the Struggle for Dignity provides an overview of the literature and attitudes behind the current diagnostic nomenclature and a historical snapshot of the issues and challenges faced by gender transcendent people on the eve of publication of the Fifth Edition of the DSM.
Download or read book Sedated written by James Davies and published by . This book was released on 2022-03-03 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative and shocking look at how western society is misunderstanding and mistreating mental illness.
Download or read book Mad in America written by Robert Whitaker and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An updated edition of the classic history of schizophrenia in America, which gives voice to generations of patients who suffered through "cures" that only deepened their suffering and impaired their hope of recovery Schizophrenics in the United States currently fare worse than patients in the world's poorest countries. In Mad in America, medical journalist Robert Whitaker argues that modern treatments for the severely mentally ill are just old medicine in new bottles, and that we as a society are deeply deluded about their efficacy. The widespread use of lobotomies in the 1920s and 1930s gave way in the 1950s to electroshock and a wave of new drugs. In what is perhaps Whitaker's most damning revelation, Mad in America examines how drug companies in the 1980s and 1990s skewed their studies to prove that new antipsychotic drugs were more effective than the old, while keeping patients in the dark about dangerous side effects. A haunting, deeply compassionate book -- updated with a new introduction and prologue bringing in the latest medical treatments and trends -- Mad in America raises important questions about our obligations to the mad, the meaning of "insanity," and what we value most about the human mind.
Download or read book In the Fellowship of His Suffering written by Elahe Hessamfar and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2014-09-25 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Schizophrenia" is by many accounts the most devastating illness of our time. In this book, Elahe Hessamfar uses her personal encounter with her daughter's illness to bring the reader to experience the pain and anguish of those who suffer so intensely. She candidly discusses the gripping and dark realities her family has faced in the midst of this journey and exposes that the ride isn't easy, but it can be fruitful and purposeful, and it can be a journey of joy and peace if understood from the intended perspective. This is a fascinating and deeply theological portrayal of madness under the mighty hand of God. It challenges and awakens the reader to a heightened awareness about self, community, pain, brokenness, sin, grace, and redemption. This is the first truly biblically based, theological interpretation of madness in conversation with psychiatry and social sciences. Hessamfar passionately discusses the shortcomings of our current medical model of mental illness and directs the reader's attention to the mistreatment of those the medical community labels with "schizophrenia." She argues that not only is "schizophrenia" not pathological but it touches on the most fundamental fragilities of the human soul, and hence, it is a critical pastoral issue. Hessamfar offers tangible, inspiring, and life-changing solutions for those dealing with this most elusive and mysterious phenomenon--solutions that would bring hope and healing to the hopeless people chained in the abyss of madness.
Download or read book Mad in America written by Meike Hauck and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Library Magazine of American and Foreign Thought written by and published by . This book was released on 1883 with total page 1052 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
