Mental Ills And Bodily Cures

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Mental Ills and Bodily Cures

Author : Joel Braslow
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520917936
Total Pages : 430 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (29 download)

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Book Synopsis Mental Ills and Bodily Cures by : Joel Braslow

Download or read book Mental Ills and Bodily Cures written by Joel Braslow and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mental Ills and Bodily Cures depicts a time when psychiatric medicine went to lengths we now find extreme and perhaps even brutal ways to heal the mind by treating the body. From a treasure trove of California psychiatric hospital records, including many verbatim transcripts of patient interviews, Joel Braslow masterfully reconstructs the world of mental patients and their doctors in the first half of the twentieth century. Hydrotherapy, sterilization, electroshock, lobotomy, and clitoridectomy—these were among the drastic somatic treatments used in these hospitals. By allowing the would-be healers and those in psychological and physical distress to speak for themselves, Braslow captures the intense and emotional interplay surrounding these therapies. His investigation combines revealing clinical detail with the immediacy of "being there" in the institutional setting while decisions are made, procedures undertaken, and results observed by all those involved. We learn how well-intentioned physicians could rationalize and regard as therapeutic treatments that often had dreadful consequences, and how much the social and cultural world is inscribed within the practice of biological psychiatry. The book will interest historians of medicine, practicing psychiatrists, and everyone who knows or has seen what it's like to be in mental distress.

Mental Ills and Bodily Cures

Author : Joel T. Braslow
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780585055145
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (551 download)

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Book Synopsis Mental Ills and Bodily Cures by : Joel T. Braslow

Download or read book Mental Ills and Bodily Cures written by Joel T. Braslow and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Mental Ills and Bodily Cures" depicts a time when psychiatric medicine went to lengths we now find extreme and perhaps even brutal ways to heal the mind by treating the body. From a treasure trove of California psychiatric hospital records, including many verbatim transcripts of patient interviews, Joel Braslow masterfully reconstructs the world of mental patients and their doctors in the first half of the twentieth century. Hydrotherapy, sterilization, electroshock, lobotomy, and clitoridectomy--these were among the drastic somatic treatments used in these hospitals. By allowing the would-be healers and those in psychological and physical distress to speak for themselves, Braslow captures the intense and emotional interplay surrounding these therapies. His investigation combines revealing clinical detail with the immediacy of "being there" in the institutional setting while decisions are made, procedures undertaken, and results observed by all those involved. We learn how well-intentioned physicians could rationalize and regard as therapeutic treatments that often had dreadful consequences, and how much the social and cultural world is inscribed within the practice of biological psychiatry. The book will interest historians of medicine, practicing psychiatrists, and everyone who knows or has seen what it's like to be in mental distress.

Healing

Author : Thomas Insel, MD
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0593298047
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (932 download)

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Book Synopsis Healing by : Thomas Insel, MD

Download or read book Healing written by Thomas Insel, MD and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-02-22 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold, expert, and actionable map for the re-invention of America’s broken mental health care system. “Healing is truly one of the best books ever written about mental illness, and I think I’ve read them all." —Pete Earley, author of Crazy As director of the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Thomas Insel was giving a presentation when the father of a boy with schizophrenia yelled from the back of the room, “Our house is on fire and you’re telling me about the chemistry of the paint! What are you doing to put out the fire?” Dr. Insel knew in his heart that the answer was not nearly enough. The gargantuan American mental health industry was not healing millions who were desperately in need. He left his position atop the mental health research world to investigate all that was broken—and what a better path to mental health might look like. In the United States, we have treatments that work, but our system fails at every stage to deliver care well. Even before COVID, mental illness was claiming a life every eleven minutes by suicide. Quality of care varies widely, and much of the field lacks accountability. We focus on drug therapies for symptom reduction rather than on plans for long-term recovery. Care is often unaffordable and unavailable, particularly for those who need it most and are homeless or incarcerated. Where was the justice for the millions of Americans suffering from mental illness? Who was helping their families? But Dr. Insel also found that we do have approaches that work, both in the U.S. and globally. Mental illnesses are medical problems, but he discovers that the cures for the crisis are not just medical, but social. This path to healing, built upon what he calls the three Ps (people, place, and purpose), is more straightforward than we might imagine. Dr. Insel offers a comprehensive plan for our failing system and for families trying to discern the way forward. The fruit of a lifetime of expertise and a global quest for answers, Healing is a hopeful, actionable account and achievable vision for us all in this time of mental health crisis.

Desperate Remedies

Author : Andrew Scull
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674265106
Total Pages : 513 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (742 download)

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Book Synopsis Desperate Remedies by : Andrew Scull

Download or read book Desperate Remedies written by Andrew Scull and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-01 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping history of American psychiatry--from the mental hospital to the brain lab--that reveals the devastating treatments doctors have inflicted on their patients (especially women) in the name of science and questions our massive reliance on meds. For more than two hundred years, disturbances of the mind--the sorts of things that were once called "madness"--have been studied and treated by the medical profession. Mental illness, some insist, is a disease like any other, whose origins can be identified and from which one can be cured. But is this true? In this masterful account of America's quest to understand and treat everything from anxiety to psychosis, one of the most provocative thinkers writing about psychiatry today sheds light on its tumultuous past. Desperate Remedies brings together a galaxy of mind doctors working in and out of institutional settings: psychologists and psychoanalysts, neuroscientists, and cognitive behavioral therapists, social reformers and advocates of mental hygiene, as well as patients and their families desperate for relief. Andrew Scull begins with the birth of the asylum in the reformist zeal of the 1830s and carries us through to the latest drug trials and genetic studies. He carefully reconstructs the rise and fall of state-run mental hospitals to explain why so many of the mentally ill are now on the street and why so many of those whose bodies were experimented on were women. In his compelling closing chapters, he reveals how drug companies expanded their reach to treat a growing catalog of ills, leading to an epidemic of over-prescribing while deliberately concealing debilitating side effects. Carefully researched and compulsively readable, Desperate Remedies is a definitive account of America's long battle with mental illness that challenges us to rethink our deepest assumptions about who we are and how we think and feel.

The Routledge History of Madness and Mental Health

Author : Greg Eghigian
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1351784390
Total Pages : 405 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (517 download)

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Book Synopsis The Routledge History of Madness and Mental Health by : Greg Eghigian

Download or read book The Routledge History of Madness and Mental Health written by Greg Eghigian and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-04-07 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mad people's historical anthologies and republished writings -- Mad people's perspectives in institutional histories -- Mad people's historical biographies -- Mad people's activist histories -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Chapter 16: Dementia: confusion at the borderlands of aging and madness -- Dementia in the distant past -- Framing dementia as a brain disease in modern German psychiatry -- Framing dementia as a problem in the adjustment to aging in mid-century American psychodynamic psychiatry -- Framing dementia as dread disease and major public health crisis in an aging world -- Conclusion: the ongoing entanglement of dementia and aging -- Notes -- PART VI: Maladies, disorders, and treatments -- Chapter 17: Passions and moods -- Emotions in history -- Grand narratives and overarching themes -- Specific stories and critical contexts -- Conclusion and areas for further scholarship -- Notes -- Chapter 18: Psychosis -- Madness -- Psychosis is a special thing -- If "psychotic" means "psychosis-like," then what, pray tell, is psychosis like? -- Schizophrenia -- Notes -- Chapter 19: Somatic treatments -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Chapter 20: Psychotherapy in society: historical reflections -- Notes -- Chapter 21: The antidepressant era revisited: towards differentiation and patient-empowerment in diagnosis and treatment -- Psychopharmacology and historiography -- Towards a new chemistry of the mind -- Mother's little helpers -- Appetite for new chemical wonders for the mind -- Towards differentiation and patient empowerment in the era of genomics -- Notes -- Index

California and the Politics of Disability, 1850–1970

Author : Eileen V. Wallis
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3031217144
Total Pages : 356 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (312 download)

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Book Synopsis California and the Politics of Disability, 1850–1970 by : Eileen V. Wallis

Download or read book California and the Politics of Disability, 1850–1970 written by Eileen V. Wallis and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-03-31 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the political, legal, medical, and social battles that led to the widespread institutionalization of Californians with disabilities from the gold rush to the 1970s. By the early twentieth century, most American states had specialized facilities dedicated to both the care and the control of individuals with disabilities. Institutions reflect the lived historical experience of many Americans with disabilities in this era. Yet we know relatively little about how such state institutions fit into specific regional, state, or local contexts west of the Mississippi River; how those contexts shaped how institutions evolved over time; or how regional institutions fit into the USA’s contentious history of care and control of Americans with mental and developmental disabilities. This book examines how medical, social, and political arguments that individuals with disabilities needed to be institutionalized became enshrined in state law in California through the creation of a “bureaucracy of disability.” Using Los Angeles County as a case study, the book also considers how the friction between state and county policy in turn influenced the treatment of individuals within such facilities. Furthermore, the book tracks how the mission and methods of such institutions evolved over time, culminating in the 1960s with the birth of the disability rights movement and the complete rewriting of California’s laws on the treatment and rights of Californians with disabilities. This book is a must-read for those interested in the history of California and the American West and for anyone interested in how the intersections of disability, politics, and activism shaped our historical understanding of life for Americans with disabilities.

The Myth of Mental Illness

Author : Thomas S. Szasz
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0062104748
Total Pages : 436 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (621 download)

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Book Synopsis The Myth of Mental Illness by : Thomas S. Szasz

Download or read book The Myth of Mental Illness written by Thomas S. Szasz and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-07-12 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The landmark book that argued that psychiatry consistently expands its definition of mental illness to impose its authority over moral and cultural conflict.” — New York Times The 50th anniversary edition of the most influential critique of psychiatry every written, with a new preface on the age of Prozac and Ritalin and the rise of designer drugs, plus two bonus essays. 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.

Electroconvulsive Therapy in America

Author : Jonathan Sadowsky
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1315522845
Total Pages : 172 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (155 download)

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Book Synopsis Electroconvulsive Therapy in America by : Jonathan Sadowsky

Download or read book Electroconvulsive Therapy in America written by Jonathan Sadowsky and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-11-03 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Electroconvulsive Therapy is widely demonized or idealized. Some detractors consider its very use to be a human rights violation, while some promoters depict it as a miracle, the "penicillin of psychiatry." This book traces the American history of one of the most controversial procedures in medicine, and seeks to provide an explanation of why ECT has been so controversial, juxtaposing evidence from clinical science, personal memoir, and popular culture. Contextualizing the controversies about ECT, instead of simply engaging in them, makes the history of ECT more richly revealing of wider changes in culture and medicine. It shows that the application of electricity to the brain to treat illness is not only a physiological event, but also one embedded in culturally patterned beliefs about the human body, the meaning of sickness, and medical authority.

Anatomy of an Epidemic

Author : Robert Whitaker
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0307452425
Total Pages : 418 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Anatomy of an Epidemic by : Robert Whitaker

Download or read book Anatomy of an Epidemic written by Robert Whitaker and published by Crown. This book was released on 2011-08-02 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Updated with bonus material, including a new foreword and afterword with new research, this New York Times bestseller is essential reading for a time when mental health is constantly in the news. In this astonishing and startling book, award-winning science and history writer Robert Whitaker investigates a medical mystery: Why has the number of disabled mentally ill in the United States tripled over the past two decades? Interwoven with Whitaker’s groundbreaking analysis of the merits of psychiatric medications are the personal stories of children and adults swept up in this epidemic. As Anatomy of an Epidemic reveals, other societies have begun to alter their use of psychiatric medications and are now reporting much improved outcomes . . . so why can’t such change happen here in the United States? Why have the results from these long-term studies—all of which point to the same startling conclusion—been kept from the public? Our nation has been hit by an epidemic of disabling mental illness, and yet, as Anatomy of an Epidemic reveals, the medical blueprints for curbing that epidemic have already been drawn up. Praise for Anatomy of an Epidemic “The timing of Robert Whitaker’s Anatomy of an Epidemic, a comprehensive and highly readable history of psychiatry in the United States, couldn’t be better.”—Salon “Anatomy of an Epidemic offers some answers, charting controversial ground with mystery-novel pacing.”—TIME “Lucid, pointed and important, Anatomy of an Epidemic should be required reading for anyone considering extended use of psychiatric medicine. Whitaker is at the height of his powers.” —Greg Critser, author of Generation Rx

The Incorrigibles

Author : Ry Marcattilio-McCracken
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
ISBN 13 : 1496237102
Total Pages : 237 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (962 download)

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Book Synopsis The Incorrigibles by : Ry Marcattilio-McCracken

Download or read book The Incorrigibles written by Ry Marcattilio-McCracken and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2023-10 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between September 1935 and June 1936, sixty-two girls from a reformatory in north-central Kansas were sterilized in the name of eugenics. None of the girls were habitual criminals, had multiple children, were living on social welfare, or were found to have IQs below seventy; in other words, almost none of them fit the categories usually described by eugenicists as justification for sterilization or covered by Kansas's eugenic sterilization law. Yet no one at the time--including the reform school superintendent who ordered the procedures performed--had trouble defending the sterilizations as eugenically minded. The general public, however, found the justifications significantly more controversial after the story hit the newspapers. In The Incorrigibles Ry Marcattilio-McCracken interrogates the overlooked history of eugenics in Kansas. He argues that eugenics developed alongside Progressive social welfare reforms in public health, criminal deterrence, child welfare, and juvenile delinquency. Between 1890 and 1955, ideas about rural degenerationism and hereditarianism infused the mission of "progressive" reformers, who linked delinquency, incorrigibility, and immorality to inheritable traits. Marcattilio-McCracken shows how the era's institutional overcrowding, landmark Supreme Court cases, and the economic downturn of the Great Depression contributed to the sterilization of the students from the Girls' Industrial School in Beloit, Kansas.

Martín Ramírez

Author : Víctor M. Espinosa
Publisher : University of Texas Press
ISBN 13 : 1477307753
Total Pages : 329 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (773 download)

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Book Synopsis Martín Ramírez by : Víctor M. Espinosa

Download or read book Martín Ramírez written by Víctor M. Espinosa and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2015-11-01 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes bibliographical references and index.

Many Forms of Madness

Author : Rosemary Radford Ruether
Publisher : Fortress Press
ISBN 13 : 1451417810
Total Pages : 210 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (514 download)

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Book Synopsis Many Forms of Madness by : Rosemary Radford Ruether

Download or read book Many Forms of Madness written by Rosemary Radford Ruether and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In telling the story of her son's thirty-year struggle with schizophrenia, Ruether lays bare the inhumane treatment throughout history of people with mental illness. Despite countless reforms by "idealistic reformers" and an enlightened understanding that mental illness is a physical disease like any other, conditions for people who struggle with mental illness are little improved. Ruether asks why this is so and then goes on to imagine what we would do for people with mental illness "if we really cared."

Psychiatry and Its Discontents

Author : Andrew Scull
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520383133
Total Pages : 376 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (23 download)

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Book Synopsis Psychiatry and Its Discontents by : Andrew Scull

Download or read book Psychiatry and Its Discontents written by Andrew Scull and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by one of the world’s most distinguished historians of psychiatry, Psychiatry and Its Discontents provides a wide-ranging and critical perspective on the profession that dominates the treatment of mental illness. Andrew Scull traces the rise of the field, the midcentury hegemony of psychoanalytic methods, and the paradigm’s decline with the ascendance of biological and pharmaceutical approaches to mental illness. The book’s historical sweep is broad, ranging from the age of the asylum to the rise of psychopharmacology and the dubious triumphs of “community care.” The essays in Psychiatry and Its Discontents provide a vivid and compelling portrait of the recurring crises of legitimacy experienced by “mad-doctors,” as psychiatrists were once called, and illustrates the impact of psychiatry’s ideas and interventions on the lives of those afflicted with mental illness.

Desperate Remedies

Author : Andrew Scull
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674276469
Total Pages : 513 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (742 download)

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Book Synopsis Desperate Remedies by : Andrew Scull

Download or read book Desperate Remedies written by Andrew Scull and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-17 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 “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 “I would recommend this fascinating, alarming, and alerting book to anybody. For anyone referred to a psychiatrist it is surely essential.” —The Spectator “Meticulously researched and beautifully written, and even funny at times.” —The Guardian “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 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. One of the most provocative thinkers writing about psychiatry today, Andrew Scull carefully reconstructs the rise and fall of state-run mental hospitals to explain why so many of the mentally ill are now on the street, and why victims of experimental therapies were so often women. He reveals how drug companies expanded their reach to treat a growing catalog of ills, while deliberately concealing the side effects of drugs now routinely prescribed from childhood through senescence. Carefully researched and compulsively readable, this passionate and compassionate account of America’s long battle with mental illness challenges us to rethink our deepest assumptions about how we think and feel.

Cultural Sociology of Mental Illness

Author : Andrew Scull
Publisher : SAGE Publications
ISBN 13 : 1483346331
Total Pages : 1161 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (833 download)

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Book Synopsis Cultural Sociology of Mental Illness by : Andrew Scull

Download or read book Cultural Sociology of Mental Illness written by Andrew Scull and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2013-12-20 with total page 1161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cultural Sociology of Mental Illness: An A to Z Guide looks at recent reports that suggest an astonishing rise in mental illness and considers such questions as: Are there truly more mentally ill people now or are there just more people being diagnosed and treated? What are the roles of economics and the pharmacological industry in this controversy? At the core of what is going on with mental illness in America and around the world, the editors suggest, is cultural sociology: How differing cultures treat mental illness and, in turn, how mental health patients are affected by the culture. In this illuminating multidisciplinary reference, expert scholars explore the culture of mental illness from the non-clinical perspectives of sociology, history, psychology, epidemiology, economics, public health policy, and finally, the mental health patients themselves. Key themes include Cultural Comparisons of Mental Health Disorders; Cultural Sociology of Mental Illness Around the World; Economics; Epidemiology; Mental Health Practitioners; Non-Drug Treatments; Patient, the Psychiatry, and Psychology; Psychiatry and Space; Psychopharmacology; Public Policy; Social History; and Sociology. Key Features This two-volume A-Z work, available in both print and electronic formats, includes close to 400 articles by renowned experts in their respective fields. An Introduction, a thematic Reader’s Guide, a Glossary, and a Resource Guide to Key Books, Journals, and Associations and their web sites enhance this invaluable reference. A chronology places the cultural sociology of mental illness in historical context. 150 photos bring concepts to life. The range and scope of this Encyclopedia is vivid testimony to the intellectual vitality of the field and will make a useful contribution to the next generation of sociological research on the cultural sociology of mental illness.

Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness

Author : Anne Harrington
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 1324001976
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (24 download)

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Book Synopsis Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness by : Anne Harrington

Download or read book Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness written by Anne Harrington and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2019-04-16 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mind Fixers tells the history of psychiatry’s quest to understand the biological basis of mental illness and asks where we need to go from here. In Mind Fixers, Anne Harrington, author of The Cure Within, explores psychiatry’s repeatedly frustrated struggle to understand mental disorder in biomedical terms. She shows how the stalling of early twentieth century efforts in this direction allowed Freudians and social scientists to insist, with some justification, that they had better ways of analyzing and fixing minds. But when the Freudians overreached, they drove psychiatry into a state of crisis that a new “biological revolution” was meant to alleviate. Harrington shows how little that biological revolution had to do with breakthroughs in science, and why the field has fallen into a state of crisis in our own time. Mind Fixers makes clear that psychiatry’s waxing and waning biological enthusiasms have been shaped not just by developments in the clinic and lab, but also by a surprising range of social factors, including immigration, warfare, grassroots activism, and assumptions about race and gender. Government programs designed to empty the state mental hospitals, acrid rivalries between different factions in the field, industry profit mongering, consumerism, and an uncritical media have all contributed to the story as well. In focusing particularly on the search for the biological roots of schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar disorder, Harrington underscores the high human stakes for the millions of people who have sought medical answers for their mental suffering. This is not just a story about doctors and scientists, but about countless ordinary people and their loved ones. A clear-eyed, evenhanded, and yet passionate tour de force, Mind Fixers recounts the past and present struggle to make mental illness a biological problem in order to lay the groundwork for creating a better future, both for those who suffer and for those whose job it is to care for them.

Mad in America

Author : Robert Whitaker
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0786723793
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (867 download)

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Book Synopsis Mad in America by : Robert Whitaker

Download or read book Mad in America written by Robert Whitaker and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2001-12-14 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.