Psychiatry Under the Influence

Psychiatry Under the Influence PDF Author: R. Whitaker
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 113751602X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
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.

Psychiatry Under the Influence

Psychiatry Under the Influence PDF Author: R. Whitaker
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 113751602X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Get Book

Book Description
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.

Psychiatry Under the Influence

Psychiatry Under the Influence PDF Author: R. Whitaker
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 113751602X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Get Book

Book Description
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.

Anatomy of an Epidemic

Anatomy of an Epidemic PDF Author: Robert Whitaker
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307452425
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
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

The Book of Woe

The Book of Woe PDF Author: Gary Greenberg
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101621109
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
“Gary Greenberg has become the Dante of our psychiatric age, and the DSM-5 is his Inferno.” —Errol Morris Since its debut in 1952, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has set down the “official” view on what constitutes mental illness. Homosexuality, for instance, was a mental illness until 1973. Each revision has created controversy, but the DSM-5 has taken fire for encouraging doctors to diagnose more illnesses—and to prescribe sometimes unnecessary or harmful medications. Respected author and practicing psychotherapist Gary Greenberg embedded himself in the war that broke out over the fifth edition, and returned with an unsettling tale. Exposing the deeply flawed process behind the DSM-5’s compilation, The Book of Woe reveals how the manual turns suffering into a commodity—and made the APA its own biggest beneficiary.

Crazy Like Us

Crazy Like Us PDF Author: Ethan Watters
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 9781416587194
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
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? 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. America has been the world leader in generating new mental health treatments and modern theories of the human psyche. We export our psychopharmaceuticals packaged with the certainty that our biomedical knowledge will relieve the suffering and stigma of mental illness. We categorize disorders, thereby defining mental illness and health, and then parade these seemingly scientific certainties in front of the world. The blowback from these efforts is just now coming to light: It turns out that we have not only been changing the way the world talks about and treats mental illness -- we have been changing the mental illnesses themselves. For millennia, local beliefs in different cultures have shaped the experience of mental illness into endless varieties. Crazy Like Us documents how American interventions have discounted and worked to change those indigenous beliefs, often at a dizzying rate. Over the last decades, mental illnesses popularized in America have been spreading across the globe with the speed of contagious diseases. Watters travels from China to Tanzania to bring home the unsettling conclusion that the virus is us: As we introduce Americanized ways of treating mental illnesses, we are in fact spreading the diseases. In post-tsunami Sri Lanka, Watters reports on the Western trauma counselors who, in their rush to help, inadvertently trampled local expressions of grief, suffering, and healing. In Hong Kong, he retraces the last steps of the teenager whose death sparked an epidemic of the American version of anorexia nervosa. Watters reveals the truth about a multi-million-dollar campaign by one of the world's biggest drug companies to change the Japanese experience of depression -- literally marketing the disease along with the drug. But this book is not just about the damage we've caused in faraway places. Looking at our impact on the psyches of people in other cultures is a gut check, a way of forcing ourselves to take a fresh look at our own beliefs about mental health and healing. When we examine our assumptions from a farther shore, we begin to understand how our own culture constantly shapes and sometimes creates the mental illnesses of our time. By setting aside our role as the world's therapist, we may come to accept that we have as much to learn from other cultures' beliefs about the mind as we have to teach.

Positive Psychiatry

Positive Psychiatry PDF Author: Edited by Dilip V. Jeste M.D.
Publisher: American Psychiatric Pub
ISBN: 1585624950
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
While there are a number of books on positive psychology, Positive Psychiatry is unique in its biological foundation and medical rigor and is the only book designed to bring positive mental health ideas and interventions into mainstream psychiatric research, training, and clinical practice. After an overview describing the definition, history, and goals of positive psychiatry, the contributors—pioneers and thought leaders in the field—explore positive psychosocial factors, such as resilience and psychosocial growth; positive outcomes, such as recovery and well-being; psychotherapeutic and behavioral interventions, among others; and special topics, such as child and geriatric psychiatry, diverse populations, and bioethics. The book successfully brings the unique skill sets and methods of psychiatry to the larger positive health movement. Each chapter highlights key points for current clinical services, as practiced by psychiatrists, primary care doctors, and nurses, as well as those in allied health and mental health fields. These readers will find Positive Psychiatry to be immensely helpful in bringing positive mental health concepts and interventions into the clinical arena.

Clinical Psychiatry in Imperial Germany

Clinical Psychiatry in Imperial Germany PDF Author: Eric J. Engstrom
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501723944
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
The psychiatric profession in Germany changed radically from the mid-nineteenth century to the beginning of World War I. In a book that demonstrates his extensive archival knowledge and an impressive command of the primary literature, Eric J. Engstrom investigates the history of university psychiatric clinics in Imperial Germany from 1867 to 1914, emphasizing the clinical practices and professional debates surrounding the development of these institutions and their impact on the course of German psychiatry.The rise of university psychiatric clinics reflects, Engstrom tells us, a shift not only in asylum culture, but also in the ways in which social, political, and economic issues deeply influenced the practice of psychiatry. Equally convincing is Engstrom's argument that psychiatrists were responding to and working to shape the rapidly changing perceptions of madness in Imperial Germany. In a series of case studies, the book focuses on a number of important clinical spaces such as the laboratory, the ward, the lecture hall, and the polyclinic. Engstrom argues that within these spaces clinics developed their own disciplinary economies and that their emergence was inseparably intertwined with jurisdictional contests between competing scientific, administrative, didactic, and sociopolitical agendas.

Mad in America

Mad in America PDF Author: Robert Whitaker
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1541646398
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
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.

Unhinged

Unhinged PDF Author: Daniel Carlat
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 9781416596356
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
IN THIS STIRRING AND BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN WAKE-UP CALL, psychiatrist Daniel Carlat exposes deeply disturbing problems plaguing his profession, revealing the ways it has abandoned its essential purpose: to understand the mind, so that psychiatrists can heal mental illness and not just treat symptoms. As he did in his hard-hitting and widely read New York Times Magazine article "Dr. Drug Rep," and as he continues to do in his popular watchdog newsletter, The Carlat Psychiatry Report, he writes with bracing honesty about how psychiatry has so largely forsaken the practice of talk therapy for the seductive—and more lucrative—practice of simply prescribing drugs, with a host of deeply troubling consequences. Psychiatrists have settled for treating symptoms rather than causes, embracing the apparent medical rigor of DSM diagnoses and prescription in place of learning the more challenging craft of therapeutic counseling, gaining only limited understanding of their patients’ lives. Talk therapy takes time, whereas the fifteen-minute "med check" allows for more patients and more insurance company reimbursement. Yet DSM diagnoses, he shows, are premised on a good deal less science than we would think. Writing from an insider’s perspective, with refreshing forthrightness about his own daily struggles as a practitioner, Dr. Carlat shares a wealth of stories from his own practice and those of others that demonstrate the glaring shortcomings of the standard fifteen-minute patient visit. He also reveals the dangers of rampant diagnoses of bipolar disorder, ADHD, and other "popular" psychiatric disorders, and exposes the risks of the cocktails of medications so many patients are put on. Especially disturbing are the terrible consequences of overprescription of drugs to children of ever younger ages. Taking us on a tour of the world of pharmaceutical marketing, he also reveals the inner workings of collusion between psychiatrists and drug companies. Concluding with a road map for exactly how the profession should be reformed, Unhinged is vital reading for all those in treatment or considering it, as well as a stirring call to action for the large community of psychiatrists themselves. As physicians and drug companies continue to work together in disquieting and harmful ways, and as diagnoses—and misdiagnoses—of mental disorders skyrocket, it’s essential that Dr. Carlat’s bold call for reform is heeded.

Prescriptions for the Mind

Prescriptions for the Mind PDF Author: Joel Paris
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199718313
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
The practice of psychiatry has undergone great changes in recent years. In this book, Joel Paris, MD, a veteran psychiatrist, provides a fluently written and accessible "state-of-the-field" assessment. Himself a clinician, researcher, and teacher, Paris focuses on the most striking change within the field - the diverging roles of psychopharmacology and psychotherapy in contemporary practice. Where once psychiatrists were trained in Freudian psychoanalysis - which involved, more than anything else, talking - current pressures in mental health practice, including those imposed by managed care, are leading psychiatrists to treat more and more of their patients exclusively with medication, which is cheaper and faster. At the same time, psychotherapy is increasingly not being taught to new psychiatrists-in-training, even though, as Paris reveals, there is scientific evidence that both talk therapies and medication can play an important role in the treatment of mental illness. These developments are occuring against a backdrop of exploding research in the genetics and neurobiology of mental illness that will continue to drive the field. Paris ends by contemplating how going forward psychiatry can best respond to all these forces and proposes a team-based approach to mental health care. The book will appeal both to specialists and nonspecialists, particularly psychiatric residents and fellows, medical students considering specialization in psychiatry, clinical psychologists, social workers, and general readers, especially consumers of mental health services.