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| robert whitaker mad in america: Mad in America Robert Whitaker, 2019-09-10 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. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: Anatomy of an Epidemic Robert Whitaker, 2010-04-13 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 |
| robert whitaker mad in america: Psychiatry Under the Influence R. Whitaker, L. Cosgrove, 2015-04-23 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. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: On the Laps of Gods Robert Whitaker, 2009-06-23 They Shot Them Down Like Rabbits . . . September 30, 1919. The United States teetered on the edge of a racial civil war. During the previous three months, racial fighting had erupted in twenty-five cities. And deep in the Arkansas Delta, black sharecroppers were meeting in a humble wooden church, forming a union and making plans to sue their white landowners. A car pulled up outside the church . . . What happened next has long been shrouded in controversy. In this heartbreaking but ultimately triumphant story of courage and will, journalist Robert Whitaker carefully documents–and exposes–one of the worst racial massacres in American history. On the Laps of Gods is the story of the 1919 Elaine massacre in Hoop Spur, Arkansas, during which white mobs and federal troops killed more than one hundred black men, women, and children; of the twelve black men subsequently condemned to die; of Scipio Africanus Jones, a former slave and tenacious black attorney; and of Moore v. Dempsey, the case Jones brought to the Supreme Court, which set the legal stage for the civil rights movement half a century later. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: Mad in America Robert Whitaker, 2001-12-14 In Mad in America, medical journalist Robert Whitaker reveals an astounding truth: Schizophrenics in the United States fare worse than those in poor countries, and quite possibly worse than asylum patients did in the early nineteenth century. Indeed, Whitaker argues, modern treatments for the severely mentally ill are just old medicine in new bottles and we as a society are deluded about their efficacy. Tracing over three centuries of cures for madness, Whitaker shows how medical therapies-from spinning or chilling patients in colonial times to more modern methods of electroshock, lobotomy, and drugs-have been used to silence patients and dull their minds, deepening their suffering and impairing their hope of recovery. Based on exhaustive research culled from old patient medical records, historical accounts, and government documents, this haunting book raises important questions about our obligations to the mad, what it means to be insane, and what we value most about the human mind. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: The Shame of the States Albert Deutsch, 1948 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. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: Mad Science Stuart A. Kirk, Tomi Gomory, David Cohen, 2013-04-04 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. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: The Lives They Left Behind Darby Penney, 2010-02 More than four hundred abandoned suitcases filled with patients' belongings were found when Willard Psychiatric Center closed in 1995 after 125 years of operation. In this fully-illustrated social history, they are skillfully examined and compared to the written record to create a moving-and devastating-group portrait of twentieth-century American psychiatric care. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: Madness Mary de Young, 2014-01-10 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. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: Critical Psychiatry Sandra Steingard, 2018-12-24 This book is a guide for psychiatrists struggling to incorporate transformational strategies into their clinical work. The book begins with an overview of the concept of critical psychiatry before focusing its analytic lens on the DSM diagnostic system, the influence of the pharmaceutical industry, the crucial distinction between drug-centered and disease-centered approaches to pharmacotherapy, the concept of “de-prescribing,” coercion in psychiatric practice, and a range of other issues that constitute the targets of contemporary critiques of psychiatric theory and practice. Written by experts in each topic, this is the first book to explicate what has come to be called critical psychiatry from an unbiased and clinically relevant perspective. Critical Psychiatry is an excellent, practical resource for clinicians seeking a solid foundation in the contemporary controversies within the field. General and forensic psychiatrists; family physicians, internists, and pediatricians who treat psychiatric patients; and mental health clinicians outside of medicine will all benefit from its conceptual insights and concrete advice. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: The Myth of the Chemical Cure J. Moncrieff, 2016-04-13 This book overturns the idea that psychiatric drugs work by correcting chemical imbalance and analyzes the professional, commercial and political vested interests that have shaped this view. It provides a comprehensive critique of research on drugs including antidepressants, antipsychotics and mood stabilizers. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: The Revolt Against Psychiatry Bonnie Burstow, 2019-08-20 A real eye-opener, this riveting anti/critical psychiatry book is comprised of original cutting-edge dialogues between Burstow (an antipsychiatry theorist and activist) and other leaders in the “revolt against psychiatry,” including radical practitioners, lawyers, reporters, activists, psychiatric survivors, academics, family members, and artists. People in dialogue with the author include Indigenous leader Roland Chrisjohn, psychiatrist Peter Breggin, survivor Lauren Tenney, and scholar China Mills. The single biggest focus/tension in the book is a psychiatry abolition position versus a critical psychiatry (or reformist) position. In the scope of this project, Burstow considers the ways racism, genocide, Indigeneity, sexism, media bias, madness, neurodiversity, and strategic activism are intertwined with critical and antipsychiatry. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal Peter Roger Breggin, Peter R. Breggin, MD, 2012-07-19 Print+CourseSmart |
| robert whitaker mad in america: We've Been Too Patient L. D. Green, Kelechi Ubozoh, 2019-07-09 25 unflinching stories and essays from the front lines of the radical mental health movement Overmedication, police brutality, electroconvulsive therapy, involuntary hospitalization, traumas that lead to intense altered states and suicidal thoughts: these are the struggles of those labeled “mentally ill.” While much has been written about the systemic problems of our mental-health care system, this book gives voice to those with personal experience of psychiatric miscare often excluded from the discussion, like people of color and LGBTQ+ communities. It is dedicated to finding working alternatives to the “Mental Health Industrial Complex” and shifting the conversation from mental illness to mental health. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: Insane Alisa Roth, 2018-04-03 An urgent exposéf the mental health crisis in our courts, jails, and prisons America has made mental illness a crime. Jails in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago each house more people with mental illnesses than any hospital. As many as half of all people in America's jails and prisons have a psychiatric disorder. One in four fatal police shootings involves a person with such disorders. In this revelatory book, journalist Alisa Roth goes deep inside the criminal justice system to show how and why it has become a warehouse where inmates are denied proper treatment, abused, and punished in ways that make them sicker. Through intimate stories of people in the system and those trying to fix it, Roth reveals the hidden forces behind this crisis and suggests how a fairer and more humane approach might look. Insane is a galvanizing wake-up call for criminal justice reformers and anyone concerned about the plight of our most vulnerable. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: Unhinged Daniel Carlat, 2010-05-18 In this stirring and beautifully written wake-up call, psychiatrist Daniel Carlat 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. Psychiatrist Daniel Carlat has noticed a pattern plaguing his profession. 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. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: Saving Normal Allen Frances, M.D., 2013-05-14 From the most powerful psychiatrist in America (New York Times) and the man who wrote the book on mental illness (Wired), a deeply fascinating and urgently important critique of the widespread medicalization of normality Anyone living a full, rich life experiences ups and downs, stresses, disappointments, sorrows, and setbacks. These challenges are a normal part of being human, and they should not be treated as psychiatric disease. However, today millions of people who are really no more than worried well are being diagnosed as having a mental disorder and are receiving unnecessary treatment. In Saving Normal, Allen Frances, one of the world's most influential psychiatrists, warns that mislabeling everyday problems as mental illness has shocking implications for individuals and society: stigmatizing a healthy person as mentally ill leads to unnecessary, harmful medications, the narrowing of horizons, misallocation of medical resources, and draining of the budgets of families and the nation. We also shift responsibility for our mental well-being away from our own naturally resilient and self-healing brains, which have kept us sane for hundreds of thousands of years, and into the hands of Big Pharma, who are reaping multi-billion-dollar profits. Frances cautions that the new edition of the bible of psychiatry, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5 (DSM-5), will turn our current diagnostic inflation into hyperinflation by converting millions of normal people into mental patients. Alarmingly, in DSM-5, normal grief will become Major Depressive Disorder; the forgetting seen in old age is Mild Neurocognitive Disorder; temper tantrums are Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder; worrying about a medical illness is Somatic Symptom Disorder; gluttony is Binge Eating Disorder; and most of us will qualify for adult Attention Deficit Disorder. What's more, all of these newly invented conditions will worsen the cruel paradox of the mental health industry: those who desperately need psychiatric help are left shamefully neglected, while the worried well are given the bulk of the treatment, often at their own detriment. Masterfully charting the history of psychiatric fads throughout history, Frances argues that whenever we arbitrarily label another aspect of the human condition a disease, we further chip away at our human adaptability and diversity, dulling the full palette of what is normal and losing something fundamental of ourselves in the process. Saving Normal is a call to all of us to reclaim the full measure of our humanity. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: American Psychosis E. Fuller Torrey, 2013-08-22 In 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered an historic speech on mental illness and retardation. He described sweeping new programs to replace the shabby treatment of the many millions of the mentally disabled in custodial institutions with treatment in community mental health centers. This movement, later referred to as deinstitutionalization, continues to impact mental health care. Though he never publicly acknowledged it, the program was a tribute to Kennedy's sister Rosemary, who was born mildly retarded and developed a schizophrenia-like illness. Terrified she'd become pregnant, Joseph Kennedy arranged for his daughter to receive a lobotomy, which was a disaster and left her severely retarded. Fifty years after Kennedy's speech, E. Fuller Torrey's book provides an inside perspective on the birth of the federal mental health program. On staff at the National Institute of Mental Health when the program was being developed and implemented, Torrey draws on his own first-hand account of the creation and launch of the program, extensive research, one-on-one interviews with people involved, and recently unearthed audiotapes of interviews with major figures involved in the legislation. As such, this book provides historical material previously unavailable to the public. Torrey examines the Kennedys' involvement in the policy, the role of major players, the responsibility of the state versus the federal government in caring for the mentally ill, the political maneuverings required to pass the legislation, and how closing institutions resulted not in better care - as was the aim - but in underfunded programs, neglect, and higher rates of community violence. Many now wonder why public mental illness services are so ineffective. At least one-third of the homeless are seriously mentally ill, jails and prisons are grossly overcrowded, largely because the seriously mentally ill constitute 20 percent of prisoners, and public facilities are overrun by untreated individuals. As Torrey argues, it is imperative to understand how we got here in order to move forward towards providing better care for the most vulnerable. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: Trump Revealed Michael Kranish, Marc Fisher, 2016-08-23 Who is Donald J. Trump? Despite decades of scrutiny, many aspects of his life are not well known. To discover Trump in full, The Washington Post assembled a team of ... reporters and researchers to delve into every aspect of Trump's improbable life, from his privileged upbringing in Queens to his ... 2016 rise to seize the Republican candidacy for president--Dust jacket flap. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: Dante's Cure Daniel Dorman, 2003 As much the story of a young doctor finding his own path in a controversial new world of anti-psychotic drugs, this is the true account of a successful therapeutic process that took place six days a week, for seven years. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: Psychiatrized Renée A Schuls-Jacobson, 2021-07-11 When a trusted physician tells Renée Schuls-Jacobson that he has the solution for her chronic insomnia -- a tried and true medication without any side effects, she believes him. For seven years, she takes her medication exactly as prescribed until, one day, she learns that her doctor is wrong: long-term benzodiazepine use causes all kinds of problems including physical dependence, withdrawal reactions as well as changes in memory and cognition. With the help of an addiction specialist, Renée embarks on a slow, medically supervised taper, only to find herself cognitively scrambled and stuck in the nightmare of benzodiazepine withdrawal. For nearly four years, she endures hundreds of terrifying physical, emotional and psychological symptoms - none of which were present before taking the medication. While healing from an iatrogenic brain injury that is not widely recognized by doctors, Renée leaves everything familiar behind and goes on a journey, meeting scientists and sages, healers and hucksters, who all teach her the same hard lesson: to stop seeking the help of experts and to trust her intuition. In PSYCHIATRIZED: Waking Up After a Decade of Bad Medicine, Renée Schuls-Jacobson contemplates the cost of compliance and exposes the truth about the dangers of psychiatric drugs as well as a discontinuation syndrome, which affects thousands of men and women worldwide. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: Cracked James Davies, 2021-11-15 A “thought-provoking” look at the psychiatric profession, the overprescribing of pharmaceuticals, and the cost to patients’ health (Booklist). In an effort to enlighten a new generation about its growing reliance on psychiatry, this illuminating volume investigates why psychiatry has become the fastest-growing medical field in history; why psychiatric drugs are now more widely prescribed than ever before; and why psychiatry, without solid scientific justification, keeps expanding the number of mental disorders it believes to exist.This revealing volume shows that these issues can be explained by one startling fact: in recent decades psychiatry has become so motivated by power that it has put the pursuit of pharmaceutical riches above its patients'''' wellbeing. Readers will be shocked and dismayed to discover that psychiatry, in the name of helping others, has actually been helping itself.In a style reminiscent of Ben Goldacre''''s Bad Science and investigative in tone, James Davies reveals psychiatry’s hidden failings and how the field of study must change if it is to ever win back its patients'''' trust. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: They Say You're Crazy Paula J. Caplan, 1995-04-30 In this shocking expose of the process by which the mental-health elite judge us all, Caplan demonstrates that much of what is labeled mental illness would be more appropriately called problems in living. She also points out the flaws in using the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental-Health Disorders) to decide who is truly mentally ill. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: The Zyprexa Papers Gottstein Jim, 2021-06 On December 17, 2006, The New York Times began a series of front-page stories about documents obtained from Alaska lawyer Jim Gottstein, showing Eli Lilly had concealed that its top-selling drug caused diabetes and other life-shortening metabolic problems. The Zyprexa Papers, as they came to be known, also showed Eli Lilly was illegally promoting the use of Zyprexa on children and the elderly, with particularly lethal effects. Although Mr. Gottstein believes he obtained the Zyprexa Papers legally, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn decided he had conspired to steal the documents, and Eli Lilly threatened Mr. Gottstein with criminal contempt charges. In The Zyprexa Papers, Mr. Gottstein gives a riveting first-hand account of what really happened, including new details about how a small group of psychiatric survivors spread the Zyprexa Papers on the Internet untraceably. All of this within a gripping, plain-language explanation of complex legal maneuvering and his battles on behalf of Bill Bigley, the psychiatric patient whose ordeal made possible the exposure of the Zyprexa Papers. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: Desperate Remedies Andrew Scull, 2022-05-17 A Telegraph Book of the Year A Washington Post Notable Work A Times Book of the Year A Hughes Award Finalist “An indisputable masterpiece...comprehensive, fascinating, and persuasive.” —Wall Street Journal “Brimming with wisdom and brio, this masterful work spans the history of psychiatry. Exceedingly well-researched, wide-ranging, provocative in its conclusions, and magically compact, it is riveting from start to finish. Mark my words, Desperate Remedies will soon be a classic.” —Susannah Cahalan, author of Brain on Fire “Compulsively readable...Scull has joined his wide-ranging reporting and research with a humane perspective on matters that many of us continue to look away from.” —Daphne Merkin, The Atlantic Scull's fascinating and enraging book is the story of the quacks and opportunists who have claimed to offer cures for mental illness...Madness remains the most fascinating—arguably the defining—aspect of Homo sapiens. —Sebastian Faulks, Sunday Times “I would recommend this fascinating, alarming, and alerting book to anybody. For anyone referred to a psychiatrist it is surely essential.” —The Spectator For more than two hundred years disturbances of the mind have been studied and treated by the medical profession. Mental illness, some insist, is a disease like any other, from which one can be cured. But is this true? From the birth of the asylum to the latest drug trials, Desperate Remedies brings together a galaxy of mind doctors working in and out of institutional settings: psychologists and psychoanalysts, neuroscientists and cognitive behavioral therapists, as well as patients and their families desperate for relief. Surprising, disturbing, and compelling, this passionate account of America’s long battle with mental illness challenges us to revisit some of our deepest assumptions and to confront the epidemic of mental illness so visible all around us. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: Drop the Disorder! Jo Watson, 2019-09 |
| robert whitaker mad in america: The Emperor's New Drugs Irving Kirsch, 2010-01-26 Do antidepressants work? Of course -- everyone knows it. Like his colleagues, Irving Kirsch, a researcher and clinical psychologist, for years referred patients to psychiatrists to have their depression treated with drugs before deciding to investigate for himself just how effective the drugs actually were. Over the course of the past fifteen years, however, Kirsch's research -- a thorough analysis of decades of Food and Drug Administration data -- has demonstrated that what everyone knew about antidepressants was wrong. Instead of treating depression with drugs, we've been treating it with suggestion. The Emperor's New Drugs makes an overwhelming case that what had seemed a cornerstone of psychiatric treatment is little more than a faulty consensus. But Kirsch does more than just criticize: he offers a path society can follow so that we stop popping pills and start proper treatment for depression. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: Outside Mental Health Will Hall, 1966-02-03 Outside Mental Health: Voices and Visions of Madness reveals the human side of mental illness. In this remarkable collection of interviews and essays, therapist, Madness Radio host, and schizophrenia survivor Will Hall asks, What does it mean to be called crazy in a crazy world? More than 60 voices of psychiatric patients, scientists, journalists, doctors, activists, and artists create a vital new conversation about empowering the human spirit by transforming society. Bold, fearless, and compellingly readable... a refuge and an oasis from the overblown claims of American psychiatry - Christopher Lane, author of Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became an Illness A terrific conversation partner. - Joshua Wolf Shenk, author of Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness Brilliant...wonderfully grand and big-hearted. - Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America Must-read for anyone interested in creating a more just and compassionate world. - Alison Hillman, Open Society Foundation Human Rights Initiative An intelligent, thought-provoking, and rare concept. These are voices worth listening to. - Mary O'Hara, The Guardian A new, helpful, liberating-and dare I say, sane-way of re-envisioning our ideas of mental illness. Paul Levy, Director of the Padmasambhava Buddhist Center, Portland, Oregon A fantastic resource for those who are seeking change. Dr. Pat Bracken MD, psychiatrist and Clinical Director of Mental Health Service, West Cork, Ireland |
| robert whitaker mad in america: Madness Roy Porter, 2003-03-13 This fascinating story of madness reveals the radically different perceptions of madness and approaches to its treatment, from antiquity to the present day. Roy Porter explores what we really mean by 'madness', covering an enormous range of topics from witches to creative geniuses, electric shock therapy to sexual deviancy, psychoanalysis to prozac. The origins of current debates about how we define and deal with insanity are examined through eyewitness accounts of those treating patients, writers, artists, and the mad themselves. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: Agnes's Jacket Gail A. Hornstein, 2017-09-07 In a Victorian-era German asylum, seamstress Agnes Richter painstakingly stitched a mysterious autobiographical text into every inch of the jacket she created from her institutional uniform. Despite every attempt to silence them, hundreds of other psychiatric patients have managed to get their stories out, or to publish them on their own. Today, in a vibrant network of peer-advocacy groups all over the world, those with firsthand experience of emotional distress are working together to unravel the mysteries of madness and to help one another recover. Agnes’s Jacket tells their story, focusing especially on the Hearing Voices Network (HVN), an international collaboration of professionals, people with lived experience, and their families and friends who have been working to develop an alternative approach to coping with voices, visions, and other extreme states that is empowering and useful and does not start from the assumption that such people have a chronic illness. A vast gulf exists between the way medicine explains psychiatric conditions and the experiences of those who suffer. Hornstein’s work helps us to bridge that gulf, guiding us through the inner lives of those diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar illness, depression, and paranoia, and emerging with nothing less than a new model for understanding one another and ourselves. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: The Voices Within Charles Fernyhough, 2016-04-14 We all hear voices. Ordinary thinking is often a kind of conversation, filling our heads with speech: the voices of reason, of memory, of self-encouragement and rebuke, the inner dialogue that helps us with tough decisions or complicated problems. For others - voice-hearers, trauma-sufferers and prophets - the voices seem to come from outside: friendly voices, malicious ones, the voice of God or the Devil, the muses of art and literature. In The Voices Within, Royal Society Prize shortlisted psychologist Charles Fernyhough draws on extensive original research and a wealth of cultural touchpoints to reveal the workings of our inner voices, and how those voices link to creativity and development. From Virginia Woolf to the modern Hearing Voices Movement, Fernyhough also transforms our understanding of voice-hearers past and present. Building on the latest theories, including the new 'dialogic thinking' model, and employing state-of-the-art neuroimaging and other ground-breaking research techniques, Fernyhough has written an authoritative and engaging guide to the voices in our heads. WELLCOME COLLECTION Wellcome Collection is a free museum and library that aims to challenge how we think and feel about health. Inspired by the medical objects and curiosities collected by Henry Wellcome, it connects science, medicine, life and art. Wellcome Collection exhibitions, events and books explore a diverse range of subjects, including consciousness, forensic medicine, emotions, sexology, identity and death. Wellcome Collection is part of Wellcome, a global charitable foundation that exists to improve health for everyone by helping great ideas to thrive, funding over 14,000 researchers and projects in more than 70 countries. wellcomecollection.org |
| robert whitaker mad in america: Generation Rx Greg Critser, 2005 Examines the possible consequences of the growth of prescription drug use and the impact of direct-to-consumer promotion (DTC) and off-label marketing. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: Postpsychiatry Patrick J. Bracken, Philip Thomas, 2005-12-22 For most of us the words madness and psychosis conjure up fear and images of violence. Using short stories, the authors consider complex philosphical issues from a fresh perspective. The current debates about mental health policy and practice are placed into their historical and cultural contexts. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: Rethinking Madness Paris Williams, 2012 As the recovery research continues to accumulate, we find that the mainstream understanding of schizophrenia and psychosis has lost nearly all credibility: -- After over 100 years and billions of dollars spent on research looking for schizophrenia and other related psychotic disorders in the brain, we still have not found any substantial evidence that these disorders are actually caused by a brain disease. --We have learned that full recovery from schizophrenia and other related psychotic disorders is not only possible but is surprisingly common. --We’ve discovered that those diagnosed in the United States and other “developed” nations are much less likely to recover than those in the poorest countries of the world; furthermore, those diagnosed with a psychotic disorder in the West today may fare even worse than those so diagnosed over 100 years ago. --We’ve seen that the long-term use of antipsychotics and the mainstream psychiatric paradigm of care is likely to be causing significantly more harm than benefit, greatly increasing the likelihood that a transient psychotic episode will harden into a chronic psychotic condition. --And we’ve learned that many people who recover from these psychotic disorders do not merely return to their pre-psychotic condition, but often undergo a profound positive transformation with far more lasting benefits than harms. In Rethinking Madness, Dr. Paris Williams takes the reader step by step on a highly engaging journey of discovery, exploring how the mainstream understanding of schizophrenia has become so profoundly misguided. He reveals the findings of his own groundbreaking research of people who have fully recovered from schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, weaving the stories of these participants into the existing literature and crafting a surprisingly clear and coherent vision of the entire psychotic process, from onset to full recovery. As this vision unfolds, we discover . . . . . . ways to support those struggling with psychotic experiences while also coming to appreciate the important ways that these individuals can contribute to society. . . . a deeper sense of appreciation for the profound wisdom and resilience that lie within all of our beings, even those we may think of as being deeply disturbed. . . . that by gaining a deeper understanding of madness, we gain a deeper understanding of the core existential dilemmas with which we all must struggle, arriving at the unsettling realization of just how thin the boundary really is between madness and sanity. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: Gracefully Insane Alex Beam, 2009-07-21 Its landscaped ground, chosen by Frederick Law Olmsted and dotted with Tudor mansions, could belong to a New England prep school. There are no fences, no guards, no locked gates. But McLean Hospital is a mental institution-one of the most famous, most elite, and once most luxurious in America. McLean alumni include Olmsted himself, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, James Taylor and Ray Charles, as well as (more secretly) other notables from among the rich and famous. In its golden age, McLean provided as genteel an environment for the treatment of mental illness as one could imagine. But the golden age is over, and a downsized, downscale McLean-despite its affiliation with Harvard University-is struggling to stay afloat. Gracefully Insane, by Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam, is a fascinating and emotional biography of McLean Hospital from its founding in 1817 through today. It is filled with stories about patients and doctors: the Ralph Waldo Emerson prot'g' whose brilliance disappeared along with his madness; Anne Sexton's poetry seminar, and many more. The story of McLean is also the story of the hopes and failures of psychology and psychotherapy; of the evolution of attitudes about mental illness, of approaches to treatment, and of the economic pressures that are making McLean-and other institutions like it-relics of a bygone age. This is a compelling and often oddly poignant reading for fans of books like Plath's The Bell Jar and Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted (both inspired by their author's stays at McLean) and for anyone interested in the history of medicine or psychotherapy, or the social history of New England. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: Bedlam Kenneth Paul Rosenberg, 2019-10-01 A psychiatrist and award-winning documentarian sheds light on the mental-health-care crisis in the United States. When Dr. Kenneth Rosenberg trained as a psychiatrist in the late 1980s, the state mental hospitals, which had reached peak occupancy in the 1950s, were being closed at an alarming rate, with many patients having nowhere to go. There has never been a more important time for this conversation, as one in five adults--40 million Americans--experiences mental illness each year. Today, the largest mental institution in the United States is the Los Angeles County Jail, and the last refuge for many of the 20,000 mentally ill people living on the streets of Los Angeles is L.A. County Hospital. There, Dr. Rosenberg begins his chronicle of what it means to be mentally ill in America today, integrating his own moving story of how the system failed his sister, Merle, who had schizophrenia. As he says, I have come to see that my family's tragedy, my family's shame, is America's great secret. Dr. Rosenberg gives readers an inside look at the historical, political, and economic forces that have resulted in the greatest social crisis of the twenty-first century. The culmination of a seven-year inquiry, Bedlam is not only a rallying cry for change, but also a guidebook for how we move forward with care and compassion, with resources that have never before been compiled, including legal advice, practical solutions for parents and loved ones, help finding community support, and information on therapeutic options. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: Bias in Psychiatric Diagnosis Paula J. Caplan, Lisa Cosgrove, 2004 Caplan and Cosgrove provide a broad overview of the literature in the form of 32 papers on bias in diagnostic labeling. The papers examine the creation of bias in diagnosis, the legal implications, forms of bias found in psychiatric diagnosis, bias in specific labels, and solutions to the problem. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. -- WEBSITE. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: Toxic Psychiatry Peter R. Breggin, 2015-12-22 Prozac, Xanax, Halcion, Haldol, Lithium. These psychiatric drugs--and dozens of other short-term solutions--are being prescribed by doctors across the country as a quick antidote to depression, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and other psychiatric problems. But at what cost? In this searing, myth-shattering exposé, psychiatrist Peter R. Breggin, M.D., breaks through the hype and false promises surrounding the New Psychiatry and shows how dangerous, even potentially brain-damaging, many of its drugs and treatments are. He asserts that: psychiatric drugs are spreading an epidemic of long-term brain damage; mental illnesses like schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety disorder have never been proven to be genetic or even physical in origin, but are under the jurisdiction of medical doctors; millions of schoolchildren, housewives, elderly people, and others are labeled with medical diagnoses and treated with authoritarian interventions, rather than being patiently listened to, understood, and helped. Toxic Psychiatry sounds a passionate, much-needed wake-up call for everyone who plays a part, active or passive, in America's ever-increasing dependence on harmful psychiatric drugs. |
| robert whitaker mad in america: How to Become a Schizophrenic John Modrow, 2003-02-25 demonstrates the physical, psychological, and social harm resulting from the label schizophrenic and the continuous need to reexamine the underpinnings and attitudes of psychiatry. Booklist Of all the books written about schizophrenianone is more comprehensive, accurate, thorough, and clearer in style and statement than John Modrows classic How to Become a Schizophrenic. Modrow, who is a recovered schizophrenic and is, perhaps, the unrecognized and unappreciated worlds foremost authority on this disorder, has performed a truly invaluable service and has made the major contribution to our understanding of the causes and cures of this pseudodisease. Robert A Baker, Ph.D., former chairman of the Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky; author of They Call It Hypnosis, Hidden Memories: Voices and Visions from Within and Mind Games: Are We Obsessed with Therapy? One of the best things Ive read on the subjectI am struck by the richness of the ideas and the research and the soundness of the conclusions. Peter Breggin, M.D., founder and director of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology; author of Toxic Psychiatry and Talking Back to Prozac a very important contribution to the field. Theodore Lidz, M.D., former chairman of the Department of Psychiatry, Yale University; author of The Origin and Treatment of Schizophrenic Disorders and Schizophrenia and the Family well researched and easily readable (a difficult combination to achieve)! Judi Chamberlin, author of On Our Own: Patient-Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System meticulously challenges all the major research that claims that schizophrenia is a biological disorder. Ty C. Colbert, Ph.D., author of Broken Brains or Wounded Hearts: What Causes Mental Illness Before reading the book, I was largely convinced that schizophrenia was primarily a brain disease. Modrow has forced me to take a second look, however, and reconsider the psychological causes of the condition. The Vancouver Sun it is ennobling that despite bad and discouraging treatment he was able to understand himself and others, and share that acquired knowledge in an accurate and helpful way. Bertram P. Karon, PhD., professor of clinical psychology, Michigan State University; author of Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia gives clear proof that theres real hope. Truly a remarkable book! Alan Caruba, Bookviews |
| robert whitaker mad in america: The End of Trauma George A. Bonanno, 2021-09-07 With “groundbreaking research on the psychology of resilience” (Adam Grant), a top expert on human trauma argues that we vastly overestimate how common PTSD is in and fail to recognize how resilient people really are. After 9/11, mental health professionals flocked to New York to handle what everyone assumed would be a flood of trauma cases. Oddly, the flood never came. In The End of Trauma, pioneering psychologist George A. Bonanno argues that we failed to predict the psychological response to 9/11 because most of what we understand about trauma is wrong. For starters, it’s not nearly as common as we think. In fact, people are overwhelmingly resilient to adversity. What we often interpret as PTSD are signs of a natural process of learning how to deal with a specific situation. We can cope far more effectively if we understand how this process works. Drawing on four decades of research, Bonanno explains what makes us resilient, why we sometimes aren’t, and how we can better handle traumatic stress. Hopeful and humane, The End of Trauma overturns everything we thought we knew about how people respond to hardship. |
The Case Against Antipsychotics - Mad in America
This publication by Mad in America Foundation is designed to present a succinct review of what science has to say about the long-term effects of antipsychotics. Do they reduce psychotic …
Robert Whitaker Mad In America (book) - netsec.csuci.edu
Robert Whitaker's "Mad in America": a deep dive into the history and critique of the American mental health system, exploring its evolution, the pharmaceutical industry's influence, and the …
Mad In America - communities.pacificu.edu
“Robert Whitaker has written a fascinating and provocative book—a history of the way Americans understand schizophre-nia and attempt to treat it, each twist and turn of which is marked by …
Mad In America Robert Whitaker (PDF) - archive.form.net.au
Mad in America Robert Whitaker,2019-09-10 An updated edition of the classic history of schizophrenia in America which gives voice to generations of patients who suffered through …
The Case Against Antipsychotics - madinamerica.com
“Recently, Robert Whitaker advanced a troubling interpretation of the evidence base for long-term use of antipsychotic medication. He reviewed a number of epidemiological and clinical studies …
Mad In America Whitaker (book) - content.schooldude.com
Mad in America Robert Whitaker,2019-09-10 An updated edition of the classic history of schizophrenia in America which gives voice to generations of patients who suffered through …
Robert Whitaker Mad In America (book) - oldshop.whitney.org
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 …
Robert Whitaker Mad In America (PDF) - atas.impsaj.ms.gov.br
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 …
Robert Whitaker April 2016 - Mad in America
APA’s PR campaigns in United States, which had this message: Disorders are underrecognized, undertreated, and medications are highly effective. These campaigns have continued without …
Robert Whitaker Mad In America (book) - softwatergroup.com
Robert Whitaker's "Mad in America" critiques psychiatric diagnoses, questioning their validity and societal impact. Explore the book's arguments, potential benefits, and drawbacks, plus related …
Robert Whitaker Mad In America [PDF]
Mad in America Robert Whitaker,2019-09-10 An updated edition of the classic history of schizophrenia in America which gives voice to generations of patients who suffered through …
Mad in America
In the deeply thought-provoking book, Mad in America, Robert Whitaker embarks on a daring exploration of the prevailing societal beliefs surrounding mental illness, challenging the …
Mad In America Bad Science Bad Medicine And The En (book)
Mad in America Robert Whitaker,2001-12-14 In Mad in America medical journalist Robert Whitaker reveals an astounding truth Schizophrenics in the United States fare worse than …
The pervasive financial and scientific corruption of psychiatric …
Robert Whitaker and Peter C. Gøtzsche The Mad in America Foundation, 763 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge MA, 02139, United States, and Institute for Scientific Freedom, 2970 …
Causation, not just correlation copy 3 - madinamerica.com
As prescriptions for antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs have risen, the number of people disabled by mental disorders, in country after country, has risen in lockstep (the correlative …
Psychiatric Drugs Create Violence and Suicide
4. Robert Whitaker, Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill (Perseus Publishing, New York, 2002), p 189. Courts of law also now …
Mad In America Book - investment.contify.com
Robert Whitaker's groundbreaking book, "Mad in America," challenges the prevailing psychiatric paradigm, offering a critical examination of its effectiveness and ethical implications.
AFFIDAVIT OF ROBERT WHITAKER
My first book, Mad in America, reported on our country’s treatment of the mentally ill throughout its history, and explored in particular why schizophrenia patients fare so much worse in the …
, and MAD IN AMERICA - Freedom Center
ROBERT WHITAKER, Pulitzer-nominated journalist and author of Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medi-cine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill, WILL HALL, diagnosed with …
Andreasen Drops a Bombshell: Antipsychotics Shrink the Brain
Posted on February 14, 2011 by Robert Whitaker In 1991, Nancy Andreasen began a long-running study of first-episode schizophrenia patients, which involved periodically measuring their brain
The Case Against Antipsychotics - Mad in America
This publication by Mad in America Foundation is designed to present a succinct review of what science has to say about the long-term effects of antipsychotics. Do they reduce psychotic …
Robert Whitaker Mad In America (book) - netsec.csuci.edu
Robert Whitaker's "Mad in America": a deep dive into the history and critique of the American mental health system, exploring its evolution, the pharmaceutical industry's influence, and the …
Mad In America - communities.pacificu.edu
“Robert Whitaker has written a fascinating and provocative book—a history of the way Americans understand schizophre-nia and attempt to treat it, each twist and turn of which is marked by …
The Case Against Antipsychotics - madinamerica.com
“Recently, Robert Whitaker advanced a troubling interpretation of the evidence base for long-term use of antipsychotic medication. He reviewed a number of epidemiological and clinical studies …
Mad In America Robert Whitaker (PDF) - archive.form.net.au
Mad in America Robert Whitaker,2019-09-10 An updated edition of the classic history of schizophrenia in America which gives voice to generations of patients who suffered through …
Mad In America Whitaker (book) - content.schooldude.com
Mad in America Robert Whitaker,2019-09-10 An updated edition of the classic history of schizophrenia in America which gives voice to generations of patients who suffered through …
Robert Whitaker Mad In America (book) - oldshop.whitney.org
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 …
Robert Whitaker Mad In America (PDF) - atas.impsaj.ms.gov.br
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 …
Robert Whitaker Mad In America (book) - softwatergroup.com
Robert Whitaker's "Mad in America" critiques psychiatric diagnoses, questioning their validity and societal impact. Explore the book's arguments, potential benefits, and drawbacks, plus related …
Robert Whitaker Mad In America [PDF]
Mad in America Robert Whitaker,2019-09-10 An updated edition of the classic history of schizophrenia in America which gives voice to generations of patients who suffered through …
Mad in America
In the deeply thought-provoking book, Mad in America, Robert Whitaker embarks on a daring exploration of the prevailing societal beliefs surrounding mental illness, challenging the …
Mad In America Bad Science Bad Medicine And The En (book)
Mad in America Robert Whitaker,2001-12-14 In Mad in America medical journalist Robert Whitaker reveals an astounding truth Schizophrenics in the United States fare worse than …
Robert Whitaker April 2016 - Mad in America
APA’s PR campaigns in United States, which had this message: Disorders are underrecognized, undertreated, and medications are highly effective. These campaigns have continued without …
The pervasive financial and scientific corruption of psychiatric drug ...
Robert Whitaker and Peter C. Gøtzsche The Mad in America Foundation, 763 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge MA, 02139, United States, and Institute for Scientific Freedom, 2970 …
Psychiatric Drugs Create Violence and Suicide
4. Robert Whitaker, Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill (Perseus Publishing, New York, 2002), p 189. Courts of law also now …
Mad In America Book - investment.contify.com
Robert Whitaker's groundbreaking book, "Mad in America," challenges the prevailing psychiatric paradigm, offering a critical examination of its effectiveness and ethical implications.
Causation, not just correlation copy 3 - madinamerica.com
As prescriptions for antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs have risen, the number of people disabled by mental disorders, in country after country, has risen in lockstep (the correlative …
AFFIDAVIT OF ROBERT WHITAKER
My first book, Mad in America, reported on our country’s treatment of the mentally ill throughout its history, and explored in particular why schizophrenia patients fare so much worse in the …
Andreasen Drops a Bombshell: Antipsychotics Shrink the Brain | Mad …
Posted on February 14, 2011 by Robert Whitaker In 1991, Nancy Andreasen began a long-running study of first-episode schizophrenia patients, which involved periodically measuring …
, and MAD IN AMERICA - Freedom Center
ROBERT WHITAKER, Pulitzer-nominated journalist and author of Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medi-cine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill, WILL HALL, diagnosed with …
