Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America [Unabridged] [Audible Audio Edition]
Author: - ISBN: B003N44KLA - Language: English - Format: PDF, EPUB
DESCRIPTION
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?
DETAILS
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 14 hours
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Audible Studios
- Audible.com Release Date: May 18, 2010
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B003N44KLA
REVIEWS
Robert Whitaker's Anatomy of an Epidemic reveals the damage that can and very often does result from long-term use of psychotropic drugs, and, along with it, the alarming rise in chronic mental illness in this country since such drugs as Thorazine were introduced in the 1950s. Because this drug could cause tardive dyskinesia and other permanent nervous system damage, the pharmaceutical industry got to work on new generations of drugs that are being used now.
The rise in drug use corresponds with psychiatry staking a renewed claim to therapeutic expertise and market share, which had begun to erode due to competition from counselors, social workers and others (see the Selling of DSM by Kirk and Kutchins -- [...]-- and Making Us Crazy by the same authors). The prescription pad, and the power of academic psychiatry in collaboration with Big Pharma, allowed psychiatry to open up a very large market, one that today seems to encompass the entire population.
Whitaker documents the alarming rise of disability and increasing number of people on SSI and SSDI due to mental illness over the last 50 years, including the increase since the 1980s, when serotonin reuptake inhibitors such as Prozac were introduced, and again, with the introduction of what are called atypical antipsychotics (e.g., Risperdal, Zyprexa), and reliance on drugs in the benzodiazepine family (Valium). But perhaps the most tragic of all cases with drugs used to treat what were once considered within the range of "normal" behavior (e.g., shyness) is the prescribing of amphetamine-like agents such as Ritalin or Adderall for so-called attention deficit disorder (ADHD) in children, and, even worse, powerful psychotropic drug cocktails to treat a newly introduced category of illness, childhood-onset bipolar disorder.
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