Inventing Disease And Pushing Pills

This is a highly accessible and reassuring account of how the pharmaceutical industry is redefining health, making it a state that is almost impossible to achieve. Many normal life processes – states as natural as birth, ageing, sexuality, unhappiness and death – are systematically being reinterpreted as pathological so creating new markets for their treatments. In this enlightening book, Jörg Blech reveals: how the invention of diseases by pharmaceutical companies is turning us all into patients, and how we can protect ourselves against this how the medical profession has been bullied and co-opted into endorsing profitable cures for people who aren't ill fears about how pharmaceutical companies create markets by playing on the general public's concern with their health A self-help book in the truest sense, Inventing Disease and Pushing Pills reassures us about our own health. It is essential reading for doctors, nurses and patients alike.

Mind Fixers tells the history of psychiatry’s quest to understand the biological basis of mental illness and asks where we need to go from here. In Mind Fixers, Anne Harrington, author of The Cure Within, explores psychiatry’s repeatedly frustrated struggle to understand mental disorder in biomedical terms. She shows how the stalling of early twentieth century efforts in this direction allowed Freudians and social scientists to insist, with some justification, that they had better ways of analyzing and fixing minds. But when the Freudians overreached, they drove psychiatry into a state of crisis that a new “biological revolution” was meant to alleviate. Harrington shows how little that biological revolution had to do with breakthroughs in science, and why the field has fallen into a state of crisis in our own time. Mind Fixers makes clear that psychiatry’s waxing and waning biological enthusiasms have been shaped not just by developments in the clinic and lab, but also by a surprising range of social factors, including immigration, warfare, grassroots activism, and assumptions about race and gender. Government programs designed to empty the state mental hospitals, acrid rivalries between different factions in the field, industry profit mongering, consumerism, and an uncritical media have all contributed to the story as well. In focusing particularly on the search for the biological roots of schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar disorder, Harrington underscores the high human stakes for the millions of people who have sought medical answers for their mental suffering. This is not just a story about doctors and scientists, but about countless ordinary people and their loved ones. A clear-eyed, evenhanded, and yet passionate tour de force, Mind Fixers recounts the past and present struggle to make mental illness a biological problem in order to lay the groundwork for creating a better future, both for those who suffer and for those whose job it is to care for them.

In this hard-hitting indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, Ray Moynihan and Allan Cassels show how drug companies are systematically using their dominating influence in the world of medical science, drug companies are working to widen the very boundaries that define illness. Mild problems are redefined as serious illness, and common complaints are labeled as medical conditions requiring drug treatments. Runny noses are now allergic rhinitis, PMS has become a psychiatric disorder, and hyperactive children have ADD. Selling Sickness reveals how expanding the boundaries of illness and lowering the threshold for treatments is creating millions of new patients and billions in new profits, in turn threatening to bankrupt national healthcare systems all over the world. This Canadian edition includes an introduction placing the issue in a Canadian context and describing why Canadians should be concerned about the problem.

This book examines existing treatments, legislation and research methodology of depression and exposes their limitations, championing psycho-social support as an alternative. Depression, affecting 350 million people according to the World Health Organisation, is almost invariably diagnosed by the criteria of the American Psychiatric Association – a definition which encompasses those with normal emotional responses to stressful life events. Tullio Giraldi discusses recent developments in popular and academic dialogue related to the use of antidepressants and recent increases in depression diagnosis and laments the rise in prescribing antidepressants despite their links to suicide and unfulfilled promises of efficacy and safety. He argues that psychotherapy is a cost effective treatment devoid of drugs' adverse effects. This work presents psycho-social support as an alternative to antidepressants, particularly for less severe cases, and as a more effective strategy for coping with the emotional challenges of today’s global reality. Patients, students of medicine and psychology, and professionals of mental health will find this work valuable.

The neurosciences are more than a collection of scientific practices - they offer up various ways of thinking about mind, body and society. This title casts light on the place, role and impact of neuroscience. It reflects on the insights the neurosciences have to offer sociology.

More than 1 in 7 American children get diagnosed with ADHD - three times what experts have said is appropriate - meaning that millions of kids are misdiagnosed and taking medications such as Adderall or Concerta for a psychiatric condition they probably do not have. The numbers rise every year. And still, many experts and drug companies deny any cause for concern. In fact, they say that adults and the rest of the world should embrace ADHD and that its medications will transform their lives. -- Provided by publisher.

When cannabis tincture was withdrawn from the medical establishment in the UK in 1973, cannabis became regulated solely as an illicit drug. Within a decade cannabis-based drugs were back in the clinic. The UK is one of the biggest producers of medicinal cannabis, but few patients have access to these medicines. High-profile cases of parents campaigning for access to cannabis oil for severe and rare forms of epilepsy in their children are the most recent in a long line of controversies over cannabis and cannabis-based medicines. With mounting questions about patient access, the effectiveness of international drug control systems, and the role of expert advice, it is crucial to understand how we have arrived at this situation. While the historical literature has focused on cannabis as an illicit substance, Remedicalizing Cannabis considers the botanical product and its potential to yield medical applications. Investigating the remedicalization of cannabis, Taylor explores the process whereby boundaries shift between illicit drug and licit medicine. Basing her arguments on archival material from expert committees, researchers, and activists and in-depth interviews with key players, Suzanne Taylor traces the issues and interests involved in this process, demonstrating the important roles of changing scientific knowledge, expert advice, industry, clinical trials, and patient activism. Remedicalizing Cannabis investigates the evolving tensions that have brought us to the current situation and demonstrates the role of history in understanding today’s debates about cannabis.

A fascinating and life-enhancing investigation into exercise as the new medicine, reversing many diseases, preventing others, and lengthening lives