Mad In America

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.

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

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.

"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

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

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.

"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.

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.