Mad in America - 9780465020140

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 that the old, while keeping patients in the dark about dangerous side effects.

A hunting, deeply compassionate book---now revised to reflect the latest scientific research---Mad in America rasies important question about our obligations to the mad, the meaning of "insanity," and what we value most about the human mind.

"This is such an important book that every psychiatrist should be compelled to read at least the preface, every year, And everyone else should then insist on them describing in writing, every year, what they are doing about it."---New Scientist

"A passionate, compellingly researched polemic, as fascinating as it is ultimately horrifying."---Mother Jones

"[A] valuable and meticulously documented study."---The Journal of the American Medical Association

"Robert Whitaker takes on no less than the medical establishment and the pharmaceutical industry in his tough indictment of mental-health philosophies and treatments in America...He does an intelligent and bold job of stitching together historical events to make his case that too many unsafe treatments and overpriced pills have been forced on too many patients for too flirnsy reasons."---Seattle Times