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Anatomy of an Epidemic
- Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America
- Narrated by: Ken Kliban
- Length: 13 hrs and 57 mins
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Publisher's summary
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? Every day, 1,100 adults and children are added to the government disability rolls because they have become newly disabled by mental illness, with this epidemic spreading most rapidly among our nations children. What is going on?
Anatomy of an Epidemic challenges listeners to think through that question themselves. First, Whitaker investigates what is known today about the biological causes of mental disorders. Do psychiatric medications fix chemical imbalances in the brain, or do they, in fact, create them? Researchers spent decades studying that question, and by the late 1980s, they had their answer. Listeners will be startled - and dismayed - to discover what was reported in the scientific journals.
Then comes the scientific query at the heart of this book: During the past 50 years, when investigators looked at how psychiatric drugs affected long-term outcomes, what did they find? Did they discover that the drugs help people stay well? Function better? Enjoy good physical health? Or did they find that these medications, for some paradoxical reason, increase the likelihood that people will become chronically ill, less able to function well, more prone to physical illness?
This is the first book to look at the merits of psychiatric medications through the prism of long-term results. By the end of this review of the outcomes literature, listeners are certain to have a haunting question of their own: Why have the results from these long-term studies - all of which point to the same startling conclusion - been kept from the public?
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- By: Judy Foreman
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 14 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Published in partnership with the International Association for the Study of Pain, A Nation in Pain offers a sweeping, deeply researched account of the chronic pain crisis, from neurobiology to public policy, and presents practical solutions that are within our grasp today. Drawing on both her personal experience with chronic pain and her background as an award-winning health journalist, she guides us through recent scientific discoveries, including genetic susceptibility to pain.
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Broad but superficial.
- By J. P. Murphy on 07-03-15
By: Judy Foreman
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Unbroken Brain
- A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction
- By: Maia Szalavitz
- Narrated by: Marisa Vitali
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Challenging both the idea of the addict's "broken brain" and the notion of a simple "addictive personality", Unbroken Brain offers a radical and groundbreaking new perspective, arguing that addiction is a learning disorder, and shows how seeing the condition this way can untangle our current debates over treatment, prevention, and policy.
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Not what I expected
- By Jennifer Sader on 08-28-16
By: Maia Szalavitz
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The Sober Truth
- Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry
- By: Lance Dodes MD, Zachary Dodes
- Narrated by: Stephen Bel Davies
- Length: 6 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Sober Truth, acclaimed addiction specialist Dr. Lance Dodes exposes the deeply flawed science that the 12-step industry has used to support its programs. Dr. Dodes analyzes dozens of studies to reveal a startling pattern of errors, misjudgments, and biases. He also pores over the research to highlight the best peer-reviewed studies available and discovers that they reach a grim consensus on the program's overall success.
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A necessary read for those with genuine interest
- By Gregory W Minton on 05-06-19
By: Lance Dodes MD, and others
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Suspicious Minds
- How Culture Shapes Madness
- By: Joel Gold, Ian Gold
- Narrated by: Joel Gold, Ian Gold
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Mr. A. was admitted to Dr. Joel Gold’s inpatient unit at Bellevue Hospital in 2002. He was, he said, being filmed constantly, and his life was being broadcast around the world "like The Truman Show" - the 1998 film depicting a man who is unknowingly living out his life as the star of a popular soap opera. Over the next few years, Gold saw a number of patients suffering from what he and his brother, Dr. Ian Gold, began calling the "Truman Show Delusion," launching them on a quest to understand the nature of this particular phenomenon and the nature of madness itself.
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Intriguing
- By L. K. on 04-18-16
By: Joel Gold, and others
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Transcendence
- Healing and Transformation Through Transcendental Meditation
- By: Norman E. Rosenthal
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Norman E. Rosenthal, M.D., a 20-year researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health and the celebrated psychiatrist who pioneered the study and treatment of Season Affective Disorder (SAD), brings us the most important work on Transcendental Meditation since the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Science of Being and Art of Living - and one of our generation's most significant books on achieving greater physical and mental health and wellness.
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Inspirational yet "Informercional"
- By James on 05-24-13
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Overcoming Opioid Addiction
- The Authoritative Medical Guide for Patients, Families, Doctors, and Therapists
- By: Adam Bisaga MD, Karen Chernyaev - contributor
- Narrated by: Liz Maxwell
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 50, claiming more lives than the AIDS epidemic did at its peak. Opioid abuse accounts for two-thirds of these overdoses, with over 100 Americans dying from opioid overdoses every day. Now Overcoming Opioid Addiction provides a comprehensive medical guide for opioid use disorder (OUD) sufferers, their loved ones, clinicians, and other professionals. Here is expertly presented, urgently needed information and guidance
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Authoritative, compassionate guidance
- By Amazon Customer on 05-20-18
By: Adam Bisaga MD, and others
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One Nation Under Therapy
- How the Helping Culture is Eroding Self-Reliance
- By: Christina Hoff Sommers, Sally Satel
- Narrated by: Dianna Dorman
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Americans have traditionally placed great value on self-reliance and fortitude. Recent decades, however, have seen the rise of a therapeutic ethic that views Americans as emotionally underdeveloped, requiring the ministrations of mental-health professionals to cope with life's vicissitudes. Today, having a book for every ailment, a counselor for every crisis, a lawsuit for every grievance, and a TV show for every problem degrades one's native ability to cope with life's challenges.
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If you want another perspective
- By Kurt on 03-07-09
By: Christina Hoff Sommers, and others
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The Depths
- The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic
- By: Jonathan Rottenberg
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 4 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Nearly every depressed person is assured by doctors, well-meaning friends and family, the media, and ubiquitous advertisements that the underlying problem is a chemical imbalance. Such a simple defect should be fixable, yet despite all of the resources that have been devoted to finding a pharmacological solution, depression remains stubbornly widespread. Why are we losing this fight?
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Great read for understanding
- By Adam on 02-04-15
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Recover to Live
- Kick Any Habit, Manage Any Addiction: Your Self-Treatment Guide to Alcohol, Drugs, Eating Disorders, Gambling, Hoarding, Smoking, Sex, and Porn
- By: Christopher Kennedy Lawford
- Narrated by: Seth Michael Donsky
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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From New York Times bestselling author of Symptoms of Withdrawal and Moments of Clarity Christopher Kennedy Lawford comes a book that will save lives. For most of his early life, Christopher Kennedy Lawford battled life-threatening drug and alcohol addictions. Now in recovery for more than 25 years, he works to effect change and raise global awareness of addiction in nonprofit, private, and government circles, serving as the goodwill ambassador for drug dependence treatment and care for the United Nations.
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I didn't know I was a workaholic
- By wh on 06-17-13
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The Problem of Alzheimer's
- How Science, Culture, and Politics Turned a Rare Disease into a Crisis and What We Can Do About It
- By: Jason Karlawish
- Narrated by: Jason Karlawish, Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2020, an estimated 5.8 million Americans had Alzheimer’s, and more than half a million died because of the disease and its devastating complications. Sixteen million caregivers are responsible for paying as much as half of the $226 billion annual costs of their care. As more people live beyond their 70s and 80s, the number of patients will rise to an estimated 13.8 million by 2025. Part case studies, part meditation on the past, present and future of the disease, The Problem of Alzheimer's traces Alzheimer’s from its beginnings to its recognition as a crisis.
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A must read
- By kara kuntz on 05-20-21
By: Jason Karlawish
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Right on the money
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He is a reporter...
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One Nation Under Therapy
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Your Consent Is Not Required
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Asylums are supposed to be in the past. However, though the buildings were closed, many of the practices lived on. In fact, more law-abiding Americans today are being involuntarily committed and forcibly treated "for their own good" than at any time in history.
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A compelling and comprehensive read on the abuses in modern psychiatry
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Saving Normal
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Right on the money
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Desperate Remedies
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He is a reporter...
- By Briana on 05-07-18
By: Ethan Watters
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One Nation Under Therapy
- How the Helping Culture is Eroding Self-Reliance
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- Narrated by: Dianna Dorman
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Americans have traditionally placed great value on self-reliance and fortitude. Recent decades, however, have seen the rise of a therapeutic ethic that views Americans as emotionally underdeveloped, requiring the ministrations of mental-health professionals to cope with life's vicissitudes. Today, having a book for every ailment, a counselor for every crisis, a lawsuit for every grievance, and a TV show for every problem degrades one's native ability to cope with life's challenges.
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If you want another perspective
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Mind Fixers
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In the 1980s, American psychiatry announced that it was time to toss aside Freudian ideas of mental disorder because the true path to understanding and treating mental illness lay in brain science, biochemistry, and drugs. This sudden call to revolution, however, was not driven by any scientific breakthroughs. Nor was it as unprecedented as it seemed. Why had previous efforts stalled? Was this latest call really any different? In Mind Fixers, Anne Harrington offers the first comprehensive history of the troubled search for the biological basis of mental illness.
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A summary relevant to each of us
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The Emperor’s New Drugs
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Do antidepressants work, or are they no better than placebos? Like his colleagues, Irving Kirsch spent years referring patients to psychiatrists to have their depression treated with drugs. Eventually, however, he decided to investigate for himself just how effective the drugs actually were. With 15 years of research, Kirsch demonstrates that what everyone “knew” about antidepressants is wrong; what the medical community considered a cornerstone of psychiatric treatment is little more than a faulty consensus.
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A must-read!
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American Psychosis
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E. Fuller Torrey's audiobook 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.
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Devastating analysis on US mental health policy!
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By: E. Fuller Torrey
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The Myth of Mental Illness
- Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct
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Thomas Szasz's classic book revolutionized thinking about the nature of the psychiatric profession and the moral implications of its practices. By diagnosing unwanted behavior as mental illness, psychiatrists, Szasz argues, absolve individuals of responsibility for their actions and instead blame their alleged illness. He also critiques Freudian psychology as a pseudoscience and warns against the dangerous overreach of psychiatry into all aspects of modern life.
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Good format for initial exposure to the material.
- By Anonymous User on 11-29-21
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The Book of Woe
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- Narrated by: David Drummond
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For more than two years, author and psychotherapist Gary Greenberg has embedded himself in the war that broke out over the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM) - the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) compendium of mental illnesses and what Greenberg calls "the book of woe". Since its debut in 1952, the book has been frequently revised, and with each revision, the "official" view on which psychological problems constitute mental illness has changed.
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Disappointment
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Suspicious Minds
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Mr. A. was admitted to Dr. Joel Gold’s inpatient unit at Bellevue Hospital in 2002. He was, he said, being filmed constantly, and his life was being broadcast around the world "like The Truman Show" - the 1998 film depicting a man who is unknowingly living out his life as the star of a popular soap opera. Over the next few years, Gold saw a number of patients suffering from what he and his brother, Dr. Ian Gold, began calling the "Truman Show Delusion," launching them on a quest to understand the nature of this particular phenomenon and the nature of madness itself.
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Intriguing
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By: Joel Gold, and others
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Shrinks
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Psychiatry has come a long way since the days of chaining "lunatics" in cold cells and parading them as freakish marvels before a gaping public. But, as Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, the former president of the American Psychiatric Association, reveals in his extraordinary and eye-opening audiobook, the path to legitimacy for "the black sheep of medicine" has been anything but smooth.
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Misleading
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By: Jeffrey A. Lieberman, and others
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Manufacturing Depression
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Am I happy enough? This has been a pivotal question since America's inception. "Am I not happy enough because I am depressed?" is a more recent version. Psychotherapist Gary Greenberg shows how depression has been manufactured---not as an illness but as an idea about our suffering, its source, and its relief. He challenges us to look at depression in a new way.
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Modern Gonzo Tour de Force
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The Psychopath Inside
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The memoir of a neuroscientist whose research led him to a bizarre personal discovery, James Fallon had spent an entire career studying how our brains affect our behavior when his research suddenly turned personal. While studying brain scans of several family members, he discovered that one perfectly matched a pattern he’d found in the brains of serial killers. This meant one of two things: Either his family’s scans had been mixed up with those of felons or someone in his family was a psychopath.
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Entertaining story with some quick neuroscience
- By smarmer on 09-21-14
By: James Fallon
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No-Nonsense Guide to Psychiatric Drugs
- Including Mental Effects of Common Non-Psych Medications
- By: Moira Dolan
- Narrated by: Mark Pruett
- Length: 4 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In today's assembly line health care with 10-minute office visits, often with only a non-physician assistant or nurse, the quick fix of dispensing a prescription almost never includes a thorough discussion of the factors you would really need to make a well-considered decision about accepting a drug. This user-friendly no-nonsense guide empowers the health care consumer with the basics in order to make informed decisions about psychiatric drugs and other meds with unsuspected mind-bending effects.
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Very Informative
- By Leah Kazmierski on 01-29-24
By: Moira Dolan
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Bad Pharma
- How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients
- By: Ben Goldacre
- Narrated by: Jonathan Cowley
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Medicine is broken. We like to imagine that it's based on evidence and the results of fair tests. In reality, those tests are often profoundly flawed. We like to imagine that doctors are familiar with the research literature surrounding a drug, when in reality much of the research is hidden from them by drug companies. We like to imagine that doctors are impartially educated, when in reality much of their education is funded by industry.
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A must read for health professionals
- By zerodynamics on 03-01-13
By: Ben Goldacre
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No One Cares About Crazy People
- The Chaos and Heartbreak of Mental Health in America
- By: Ron Powers
- Narrated by: Ron Powers
- Length: 14 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times-best-selling author Ron Powers offers a searching, richly researched narrative of the social history of mental illness in America paired with the deeply personal story of his two sons' battles with schizophrenia. From the centuries of torture of "lunatiks" at Bedlam Asylum to the infamous eugenics era to the follies of the anti-psychiatry movement to the current landscape in which too many families struggle alone to manage afflicted love ones, Powers limns our fears and myths about mental illness and the fractured public policies that have resulted.
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Could Have Been Better
- By Laurie on 06-18-18
By: Ron Powers
What listeners say about Anatomy of an Epidemic
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Michael
- 08-15-10
The author does not use a fair scientific approach
I tend to agree that anti-depressants and anti-psychotics are overly prescribes, particularly since the effects are not well understood. I also agree that drugs are used when cognitive behavioral techniques would be successful (but not make much money for drug companies). I further agree that drug companies have not uncommonly created unfair pro-drug testing regimes. BUT the author makes conclusions that don???t seem to be supported by any data and weaves a deeper conspiracy than the evidence seems to support. Repeating the same evidence is not more evidence. Also the author makes the key mistake seen in such books; Assume the hypothesis then search for data that supports the hypothesis. This is just not how real science is done. So if you read this, take it with a big grain of salt.
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47 people found this helpful
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- Yes and
- 07-07-10
Good Science, Great Journalism
This is an outstanding work of science journalism and it is likely to surprise the vast majority of its readers. Plus, Ken Kliban is a great narrator. As a both a scientist and a mental health clinician, I support the methods and the conclusions of this book strongly. The irony, though, is that I'm probably not alone. Many, if not most, scientists at the top of NIMH and major universities wouldn't disagree with two of the most important ideas; first, that the "chemical imbalance" hypothesis is basically nonsense, and second, that the outcomes literature for psych drugs are poor. I saw a talk given by Thomas Insel, Director of NIMH, in April (2010, that is) and he said two things that are consistent with Whitaker's conclusions. First a direct quote: "Current treatments help too few people get better and very few get well." Second, he advocated for research focused on the "connectome," that is, a developing understanding of how a typically functioning brain's circuits are interconnected and how disruptions in those connections "cause" mental illness. I think understanding the connectome is important but unlikely to reveal anything about "mental illness" for various empirical reasons I won't go into here.
Of course, what most clinical psychiatrists won't agree with is that the drugs are part of the problem. But I suspect the current generation of psych drugs are going to go the way of tobacco (which used to be promoted for its health benefits). Eventually there's just going to be too much evidence against them. Hopefully Whitaker's work will help accelerate that.
I'm going to recommend this book to everyone I possibly can. I'm also going to teach it to psychiatry residents. Well, to be honest, I'll probably teach the primary sources rather than the book itself because, if Whitaker is right, teaching the book could be bad for my career...
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33 people found this helpful
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Overall
- MM
- 08-07-10
Interesting But Repetitive
The information was fascinating. I'll be checking some of the research just to confirm the author's conclusions. There was a mind-numbing amount of repetition.
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13 people found this helpful
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- Frank
- 06-03-13
Right Questions Wrong Answer
Sloppy research, loose association and dramatic claims make for a fun read. Mr. Whitaker does highlight some truly terrifying cases were calloused and careless clinicians create significant pain.
Robert Whitaker's weak grasp of psychopathology, diagnosis and psycho-pharmacology are startling and he creates quite a mess. He borrows logic from Jenny McCarthy... More vaccines/more people diagnosed with autism thus vaccines must cause autism. Robert...more people taking psychotropics/more people on disability for depression, psychotropics cause disability.
A more compelling explanation was given by Benjamin Rush the "Father" of American psychiatry who long before the invention of modern psycho-pharmacology, noted that the wealthy who suffer psychiatric disease never recover. The poor frequently had an excellent prognosis. The difference between these two groups? The rich could pay others to do their work for them, the poor were forced to work to obtain food and shelter. Never before could society provided so much assistance to people who were struggling with depression. Mr. Whitaker is at least asking the right question. Are our efforts causing more harm than good?
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- Judith
- 07-11-10
Anatomy of an Epidemic
This book was an eye opener and very scary! When my youngest daughter was in the third grade her teacher said she had ADHD and wanted her to take drugs for it. Her father and I said "NO" and put her on a strict exercise program plus a time limit for almost everything. We bought and set timers in every room, so when the timer went off - she had to stop whatever she was doing. It worked! And the school wanted to know what we did? She's now in college and just finished two tours of duty in Iraq. I'm very proud of her.
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- mike singleton
- 08-11-10
Reads like a Conspiracy Theory
In fact I found it downright scary - not as scary as having a child suffering with schizophrenia but scary none the less. I fear for those who believe the conclusions in this book, and wonder how many families will be devastated if those they love are do not have the benefits of current treatments. As with any subject "evidence" can be found where the truth can be lost if some facts are distorted and repeated often enough as they are here. JFK and 9-11 are prime examples, as is this book. I hope saner minds prevail and people recognize this book for what it is - another conspiracy theory.
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- Cassandra
- 08-10-10
You will never think the same
Amazing book and I think essential for every person to read. We all know someone who has taken medication of been instructed to take medication for depression, anxiety, bipolar, and ADHD. Reading this books makes you much more informed to make the decision about medications. At the very least, every parent should read this book before they allow their child to take any kind of medication.
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- Soudant
- 08-09-10
I had no idea
This audio book is loaded with facts, data and information about the current epidemic of mental illness. 3.5 million children on Ritalin; 250 people a day going on Social Security Disability for various mental health issues. The solution has been to use truckloads of pharmaceuticals to control behavior or provide relief. The author presents a very convincing case that our systematic overdosing on these drugs is exacerbating a problem, indeed turning young children who act out in school into drugged young adults who, in some cases, have a life long dependency problem.
Until 1960 most of the modern psychological diseases that are prevalent in the US did not exist. Once big pharma ( the people who fill the evening news with chemical solutions for what ever ails you) cranked up its marketing machine it became essential for many of us to find the "right" pill.
This is an important book for anyone who has children or friend/relatives who may be taking or considering modern psychotropic drugs. This book makes a compelling case that the cure may be worse than the disease.
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- R. Beckley
- 04-07-11
A good 2 hour book. 14 hours is too much.
Excellent study and case for the problems with the drugs used to treat mental illness. However, the book is too long. After listening to a few cases for the first couple hours, it was good. Repitition of more cases with similar statistics and results in the next few hours started getting boring. I held on for 10 hours hoping that something new would arise in the book, but it was the same thing over and over, I finally quit the book.
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- Doctor Robert
- 08-31-10
Compelling book, boring narration...
I managed to make it through the entire book, but it's not easy to stay alert listening to the driest narration possible. I think I'm going to stick with fluffier nonfiction books for now on. Plus, I now know to truly listen to the audiobook sample and ask myself, "Could I listen to this narrator for 14 hours?" In the case of this book, I did, but it took the perseverance of a saint. I'd recommend you read this book and listen to something else.
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