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-- Are patients aware of the fact that pharmacological therapies stress the brain in ways which may prevent or postpone symptomatic and functional recovery ? ==================================================== Rethinking Psychiatric D
Under the influence of declining birth rates, expanding longevity, and changing population structures around the world, the global prevalence of senile dementia is expected to increase more than four-fold within the next forty years. Within the United States alone, the number of affected individuals over the age of 65 is expected to rise exponentially from 8 million cases (2% of the entire population in the year 2000), to 18 million retirees (roughly 4.5% of the national census in the year 2040). Although they are striking, these statistics quite likely underestimate the scope of the coming epidemic, as they fail to consider the impact of under-diagnosis, early-onset disease, and the potential for a changing incidence of illness in the context of increasingly toxic environments. In the face of this imminent crisis, concerned observers have called for policies and practices which aim to prevent, limit, or reverse dementia. Drug-Induced Dementia: A Perfect Crime is a timely resource which reveals why and how medical treatments themselves - specifically, psychopharmaceuticals - are a substantial cause of brain degeneration and premature death. A first-of-its-kind resource for patients and clinicians, the book integrates research findings from epidemiology (observational studies of patients in the "real world"), basic biology (animal experiments), and clinical science (neuroimaging and autopsy studies) in order to demonstrate the dementing and deadly effects of psychiatric drugs. Highlighted by more than 100 neuroimages, slides of tissue specimens, and illustrations, the book uniquely describes: the societal roots of the problem (target organ toxicity, regulatory incompetence, and performativity) the subtypes and essential causes of dementia the patterns, prevalence, and causes of dementia associated with antidepressants, antipsychotics, anxiolytics, mood stabilizers, and stimulants and the actions and reforms which patients, providers, and policy makers might immediately pursue, in an effort to mitigate the causes and consequences of this iatrogenic tragedy.
Blowing Smoke argues that we are losing the drug war because of our devotion to the disease model of substance abuse. That model has become the driving force for our two main strategies in the war: prohibition laws and drug rehab. The book traces the history and science behind each to show how they paradoxically enable drug use.
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.
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
In this book, Kleinman proposes an international view of mental illness and mental care. Arthur Kleinman, M.D., examines how the prevalence and nature of disorders vary in different cultures, how clinicians make their diagnoses, and how they heal, and the educational and practical implications of a true understanding of the interplay between biology and culture.
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.
Challenging an exclusively medical approach to mental health and illness, this book considers the impact psychiatric drugs can have on spirituality. In the last thirty years, a dramatic rise in medication as a treatment for mental illness has occurred in tandem with increasing numbers of people entering treatment with a spiritually-oriented understanding of their suffering. The unforeseen result is that some people taking psychiatric drugs are engaging with them in ways that can have a profound impact on the course and outcome of treatment. Based on interviews with people on psychiatric medication who regard spirituality as significant in their lives, this book reveals how medication can be perceived as both helpful and harmful to spirituality. The author argues that spirituality must be considered in debates around psychopharmacology.
A challenging reappraisal of the history of antipsychotics, revealing how they were transformed from neurological poisons into magical cures, their benefits exaggerated and their toxic effects minimized or ignored.
This report provides an overview of the current state of knowledge about why some people hear voices, experience paranoia or have other experiences seen as 'psychosis'. It also describes what can help. In clinical language, the report concerns the 'causes and treatment of schizophrenia and other psychoses'. In recent years we have made huge progress in understanding the psychology of what had previously often been thought of as a largely biological problem, an illness. Much has been written about the biological aspects: this report aims to redress the balance by concentrating on the psychological and social aspects, both in terms of how we understand these experiences and also what can help when they become distressing. We hope that this report will contribute to a fundamental change that is already underway in how we as a society think about and offer help for 'psychosis' and 'schizophrenia'. For example, we hope that in future services will no longer insist that service users accept one particular view of their problem, namely the traditional view that they have an illness which needs to be treated primarily by medication. The report is intended as a resource for people who work in mental health services, people who use them and their friends and relatives, to help ensure that their conversations are as well informed and as useful as possible. It also contains vital information for those responsible for commissioning and designing both services and professional training, as well as for journalists and policy-makers. We hope that it will help to change the way that we as a society think about not only psychosis but also the other kinds of distress that are sometimes called mental illness. This report was written by a working party mainly comprised of clinical psychologists drawn from the NHS and universities, and brought together by their professional body, the British Psychological Society Division of Clinical Psychology. This report draws on and updates an earlier one, Recent Advances in Understanding Mental Illness and Psychotic Experiences, which was published in 2000 and was widely read and cited. The contributors are leading experts and researchers in the field; a full listing with affiliations is given at the end of the report. More than a quarter of the contributors are experts by experience - people who have themselves heard voices, experienced paranoia or received diagnoses such as psychosis or schizophrenia. At the end of the report there is an extensive list of websites, books and other resources that readers might find useful, together with list of the academic research and other literature that the report draws on.