Download or read book Let Them Eat Prozac written by David Healy and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2006-10 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A psychiatrist provides an insider account on the controversial use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) Prozac. Paxil. Zoloft. Turn on your television and you are likely to see a commercial for one of the many selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) on the market. We hear a lot about them, but do we really understand how these drugs work and what risks are involved for anyone who uses them? Let Them Eat Prozac explores the history of SSRIs—from their early development to their latest marketing campaigns—and the controversies that surround them. Initially, they seemed like wonder drugs for those with mild to moderate depression. When Prozac was released in the late 1980s, David Healy was among the psychiatrists who prescribed it. But he soon observed that some of these patients became agitated and even attempted suicide. Could the new wonder drug actually be making patients worse? Healy draws on his own research and expertise to demonstrate the potential hazards associated with these drugs. He intersperses case histories with insider accounts of the research leading to the development and approval of SSRIs as a treatment for depression. Let Them Eat Prozac clearly demonstrates that the problems go much deeper than a side-effect of a particular drug. The pharmaceutical industry would like us to believe that SSRIs can safely treat depression, anxiety, and a host of other mental problems. But, as Let Them Eat Prozac reveals, this “cure” may be worse than the disease.
Download or read book Let Them Eat Prozac written by David Healy and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2004-06-01 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A psychiatrist provides an insider account on the controversial use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) Prozac. Paxil. Zoloft. Turn on your television and you are likely to see a commercial for one of the many selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) on the market. We hear a lot about them, but do we really understand how these drugs work and what risks are involved for anyone who uses them? Let Them Eat Prozac explores the history of SSRIs—from their early development to their latest marketing campaigns—and the controversies that surround them. Initially, they seemed like wonder drugs for those with mild to moderate depression. When Prozac was released in the late 1980s, David Healy was among the psychiatrists who prescribed it. But he soon observed that some of these patients became agitated and even attempted suicide. Could the new wonder drug actually be making patients worse? Healy draws on his own research and expertise to demonstrate the potential hazards associated with these drugs. He intersperses case histories with insider accounts of the research leading to the development and approval of SSRIs as a treatment for depression. Let Them Eat Prozac clearly demonstrates that the problems go much deeper than a side-effect of a particular drug. The pharmaceutical industry would like us to believe that SSRIs can safely treat depression, anxiety, and a host of other mental problems. But, as Let Them Eat Prozac reveals, this “cure” may be worse than the disease.
Download or read book Let Them Eat Prozac written by David Healy and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2004-06 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the history of SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) from their early development to their latest marketing campaigns--and the controversies that surround them--"Let Them Eat Prozac" clearly demonstrates that the "cure" may be worse than the disease.
Download or read book Pharmageddon written by David Healy and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2013-04 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This searing indictment, David Healy’s most comprehensive and forceful argument against the pharmaceuticalization of medicine, tackles problems in health care that are leading to a growing number of deaths and disabilities. Healy, who was the first to draw attention to the now well-publicized suicide-inducing side effects of many anti-depressants, attributes our current state of affairs to three key factors: product rather than process patents on drugs, the classification of certain drugs as prescription-only, and industry-controlled drug trials. These developments have tied the survival of pharmaceutical companies to the development of blockbuster drugs, so that they must overhype benefits and deny real hazards. Healy further explains why these trends have basically ended the possibility of universal health care in the United States and elsewhere around the world. He concludes with suggestions for reform of our currently corrupted evidence-based medical system.
Download or read book Prozac Backlash written by Joseph Glenmullen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001-04-17 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a controversial look at the potent drugs millions of Americans consume each day--for everything from anxiety to sexual addiction--Dr. Glenmullen presents authoritative information on why they are risky and provides advice on choosing safer alternative treatments.
Download or read book Ordinarily Well written by Peter D. Kramer and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2016-06-07 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do antidepressants work, or are they glorified dummy pills? How can we tell? In Ordinarily Well, the celebrated psychiatrist and author Peter D. Kramer examines the growing controversy about the popular medications. A practicing doctor who trained as a psychotherapist and worked with pioneers in psychopharmacology, Kramer combines moving accounts of his patients’ dilemmas with an eye-opening history of drug research to cast antidepressants in a new light. Kramer homes in on the moment of clinical decision making: Prescribe or not? What evidence should doctors bring to bear? Using the wide range of reference that readers have come to expect in his books, he traces and critiques the growth of skepticism toward antidepressants. He examines industry-sponsored research, highlighting its shortcomings. He unpacks the “inside baseball” of psychiatry—statistics—and shows how findings can be skewed toward desired conclusions. Kramer never loses sight of patients. He writes with empathy about his clinical encounters over decades as he weighed treatments, analyzed trial results, and observed medications’ influence on his patients’ symptoms, behavior, careers, families, and quality of life. He updates his prior writing about the nature of depression as a destructive illness and the effect of antidepressants on traits like low self-worth. Crucially, he shows how antidepressants act in practice: less often as miracle cures than as useful, and welcome, tools for helping troubled people achieve an underrated goal—becoming ordinarily well.
Download or read book Natural Prozac written by Joel Robertson and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-05-21 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scientifically proven and easy to follow, Dr Joel Robertson’s groundbreaking lifestyle program makes a significant advance in treating and overcoming depression and its debilitating effects without drugs. With more than 21 million people now using Prozac and other anti-depressants worldwide, this book comprises an enormous breakthrough: an all-natural method anyone can use to regain control of their physical and emotional health.Robertson, an expert in pharmacology and brain chemistry, has been using this method with remarkable success for more than twenty years. His approach uses the body’s own natural chemistry to restore the brain’s chemical balance and end the dangerous cycle of negative thought patterns and behaviour that cause depression to recur. With detailed instructions on developing a tailored program of diet and exercise, new techniques for understanding and breaking free of negative habits, and targeted exercises for burning up self-destructive chemicals. Natural Prozac gives every depression sufferer a new option.
Download or read book Prozac Nation written by Elizabeth Wurtzel and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elizabeth Wurtzel's New York Times best-selling memoir, with a new afterword "Sparkling, luminescent prose . . . A powerful portrait of one girl's journey through the purgatory of depression and back." —New York Times "A book that became a cultural touchstone." —New Yorker Elizabeth Wurtzel writes with her finger on the faint pulse of an overdiagnosed generation whose ruling icons are Kurt Cobain, Xanax, and pierced tongues. Her famous memoir of her bouts with depression and skirmishes with drugs, Prozac Nation is a witty and sharp account of the psychopharmacology of an era for readers of Girl, Interrupted and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.
Download or read book Born With a Junk Food Deficiency written by Martha Rosenberg and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2012-04-10 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This hard-hitting exposé blows the lid off of everything you thought you knew about Big Pharma and Big Food. What goes on behind the scenes in these industries is more suspicious, more devious, more disreputable than you could have ever imagined. Rosenberg’s message is clear: the pharmaceutical and agricultural industries are tainting public health through marketing disguised as medical education and research, aggressive lobbying, and high-level conflicts of interest. If you’re concerned about the safety of the drugs you take and the food you eat, you owe it to yourself to read this important book. Having gained the trust of more than twenty doctors, researchers, and experts who were willing to come forward and finally tell all, reporter and editorial cartoonist Rosenberg presents us with her shocking findings. Explosive material from whistle-blowers, scientists, unsealed lawsuits, and Big Pharma’s and Big Food’s own marketers exposes how these industries put profits before public safety and how the government puts the interests of business before the welfare of consumers, creating a double whammy that "pimps" the public health. What Rosenberg reveals about government complicity, regulatory food- and drug-safety lapses, and legislative injustices will both shock and appall.
Download or read book The Antidepressant Era written by David Healy and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this work Healy chronicles the history of psychopharmacology, from the discovery of chlorpromazine in 1951, to current battles over whether powerful chemical compounds should replace psychotherapy. The marketing of antidepressants is included.
Download or read book Moving Beyond Prozac DSM and the New Psychiatry written by Bradley Lewis and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2010-02-05 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Interesting and fresh-represents an important and vigorous challenge to a discipline that at the moment is stuck in its own devices and needs a radical critique to begin to move ahead." --Paul McHugh, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine "Remarkable in its breadth-an interesting and valuable contribution to the burgeoning literature of the philosophy of psychiatry." --Christian Perring, Dowling College Moving Beyond Prozac, DSM, and the New Psychiatry looks at contemporary psychiatric practice from a variety of critical perspectives ranging from Michel Foucault to Donna Haraway. This contribution to the burgeoning field of medical humanities contends that psychiatry's move away from a theory-based model (one favoring psychoanalysis and other talk therapies) to a more scientific model (based on new breakthroughs in neuroscience and pharmacology) has been detrimental to both the profession and its clients. This shift toward a science-based model includes the codification of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders to the status of standard scientific reference, enabling mental-health practitioners to assign a tidy classification for any mental disturbance or deviation. Psychiatrist and cultural studies scholar Bradley Lewis argues for "postpsychiatry," a new psychiatric practice informed by the insights of poststructuralist theory.
Download or read book Listening to Prozac written by Peter D. Kramer and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1997-09-01 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling examination of the revolutionary antidepressant, with a new introduction and afterword reflecting on Prozac’s legacy and the latest medical research “Peter Kramer is an analyst of exceptional sensitivity and insight. To read his prose on virtually any subject is to be provoked, enthralled, illuminated.” —Joyce Carol Oates When antidepressants like Prozac first became available, Peter D. Kramer prescribed them, only to hear patients say that on medication, they felt different—less ill at ease, more like the person they had always imagined themselves to be. Referencing disciplines from cellular biology to animal ethology, Dr. Kramer worked to explain these reports. The result was Listening to Prozac, a revolutionary book that offered new perspectives on antidepressants, mood disorders, and our understanding of the self—and that became an instant national and international bestseller. In this thirtieth anniversary edition, Dr. Kramer looks back at the influence of his groundbreaking book, traces progress in the relevant sciences, follows trends in the use and public understanding of antidepressants, and assesses potential breakthroughs in the treatment of depression. The new introduction and afterword reinforce and reinvigorate a book that the New York Times called “originally insightful” and “intelligent and informative,” a window on a medicine that is “telling us new things about the chemistry of human character.”
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 Coming of Age on Zoloft written by Katherine Sharpe and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-06-05 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling and troubling exploration of a generation raised on antidepressants, and a book that combines expansive interviews with substantive research-based reporting, Coming of Age on Zoloft is a vitally important and immediately engrossing study of one of America’s most pressing and omnipresent issues: our growing reliance on prescription drugs. Katherine Sharpe, the former editor of Seed magazine’s ScienceBlogs.com, addresses the questions that millions of young men and women are struggling with. “Where does my personality end and my prescription begin?” “Do I have a disease?” “Can I get better on my own?” Combining stout scientific acumen with first-person experience gained through her own struggle with antidepressants, Sharpe leads the reader through a complex subject, a guide towards a clearer future for all.
Download or read book The Antidepressant Solution written by Joseph Glenmullen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2006-01-20 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the FDA's warning that antidepressants may cause agitation, anxiety, hostility, and even violent or suicidal tendencies, these medications are at the forefront of national legal news. Harvard physician Joseph Glenmullen has led the charge to warn the public that antidepressants are overprescribed, underregulated, and, especially, misunderstood in their side and withdrawal effects. Now he offers a solution! More than twenty million Americans -- including over one million teens and children -- take one of today's popular antidepressants, such as Paxil, Zoloft, or Effexor. Dr. Glenmullen recognizes the many benefits of antidepressants and prescribes them to his patients, but he is also committed to warning the public of the dangers associated with overprescription. Dr. Glenmullen's last book, Prozac Backlash, sounded the alarm about possible dangers. The Antidepressant Solution provides the remedy. It is the first book to call attention to the drugs' catch-22: Although many people are ready to go off these drugs, they continue to take them because either the patient or the doctor mistakes antidepressant withdrawal for depressive relapse. The Antidepressant Solution offers an easy, step-by-step guide for patients and their doctors. Written by the premier authority in the field, The Antidepressant Solution is an invaluable book for all those concerned with going through the process -- from friends and family members to doctors and patients themselves.
Download or read book Chemically Imbalanced written by Joseph E. Davis and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of how ordinary people deal with everyday problems through self-mastery and mental health care practices. Everyday suffering—those conditions or feelings brought on by trying circumstances that arise in everyone’s lives—is something that humans have grappled with for millennia. But the last decades have seen a drastic change in the way we approach it. In the past, a person going through a time of difficulty might keep a journal or see a therapist, but now the psychological has been replaced by the biological: instead of treating the heart, soul, and mind, we take a pill to treat the brain. Chemically Imbalanced is a field report on how ordinary people dealing with common problems explain their suffering, how they’re increasingly turning to the thin and mechanistic language of the “body/brain,” and what these encounters might tell us. Drawing on interviews with people dealing with struggles such as underperformance in school or work, grief after the end of a relationship, or disappointment with how their life is unfolding, Joseph E. Davis reveals the profound revolution in consciousness that is underway. We now see suffering as an imbalance in the brain that needs to be fixed, usually through chemical means. This has rippled into our social and cultural conversations, and it has affected how we, as a society, imagine ourselves and envision what constitutes a good life. Davis warns that what we envision as a neurological revolution, in which suffering is a mechanistic problem, has troubling and entrapping consequences. And he makes the case that by turning away from an interpretive, meaning-making view of ourselves, we thwart our chances to enrich our souls and learn important truths about ourselves and the social conditions under which we live. Praise for Chemically Imbalanced “Chemically Imbalanced is an excellent addition to the works in social sciences and humanities that examine the distress of ordinary Americans from the second half of the twentieth century onward, a period when commercialized pills and the psychology-based notion of self-improvement entered the minds of Americans.” —Metascience “Chemically Imbalanced raises important questions, offers new insight into the power and reach of the biomedical model and neurobiological thinking, and I highly recommend it. I encourage readers to assign it, especially in graduate-level mental health and illness classes—or any class looking for a discussion on people’s experiences with suffering and the broad impacts of biomedical thinking and treatment.” —Social Forces
Download or read book Mania written by David Healy and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2008-06-23 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This provocative history of bipolar disorder illuminates how perceptions of illness, if not the illnesses themselves, are mutable over time. Beginning with the origins of the concept of mania—and the term maniac—in ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, renowned psychiatrist David Healy examines how concepts of mental afflictions evolved as scientific breakthroughs established connections between brain function and mental illness. Healy recounts the changing definitions of mania through the centuries, explores the effects of new terminology and growing public awareness of the disease on culture and society, and examines the rise of psychotropic treatments and pharmacological marketing over the past four decades. Along the way, Healy clears much of the confusion surrounding bipolar disorder even as he raises crucial questions about how, why, and by whom the disease is diagnosed. Drawing heavily on primary sources and supplemented with interviews and insight gained over Healy's long career, this lucid and engaging overview of mania sheds new light on one of humankind's most vexing ailments.
