Blaming the Brain : The Truth About Drugs and Mental Health

Rating:
Summary: Valenstein Exposes Fraud by Psychiatry
Review: .
The book is well written. Dr. Valenstein articulately exposes the fraud of psychiatric medicine by revealing how mainstream psychiatrists and the pharmaceutical companies exploit and harm psychiatric patients by prescribing neuroleptic drugs. The benefits of such drugs, according to Valenstein, are greatly exaggerated and the harmful effects are minimized.

Stress can indeed cause neurological changes in the brain. However, according to Valenstine and other experts, the brain can be restored to normal only if the environmental or situational causes of the stress are removed, not by psychotropic or neuroleptic drugs!

Psychiatrists who treat their patients with drugs are not helping their clients. They are exploiting them!

Dr. Valenstein has gained my respect for having the courage to reveal to the world knowledge that most exploited psychiatric patients gain only the hard way, often when it is too late, after they have suffered irreparable nerve damage [caused by the pharmaceuticals] resulting in behavior resembling Parkinson's disease.

Rating:
Summary: Psychicatric Madness
Review: As other reviewers have noted, this book hammers at the pseudoscience of biological psychiatry. The job it does is not entirely unmeritorious, but the author seems oddly unable to accept the obvious conclusion: that psychiatry is quackery. After all, if the conceptual basis of "biological psychiatry" is fraudulent, what part isn't? What is psychiatry itself if not biological psychiatry?

It is painfully obvious that the author, a "Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Michigan," has no interest in discrediting the profession of which is is a distinguished member and fellow traveler. He won't follow where his own evidence leads, and he fails to properly credit the much more intellectually courageous and energetic critiques by the likes of Thomas Szasz and Peter Breggin. Those skeptical of psychiatry are better served by digesting their books before those of Valenstein. Having done so, "Blaming the brain" will seem anticlimactic.

Since Valenstein is a psychologist, one can't help but suspect that Valenstein's book is another salvo in the long turf war between psychologists (analysts) and psychiatrists (pseudo doctors). This internecine struggle has been been in truce for a long while since most psychologists accept the biological theories propounded by psychiatrists. One of the reasons that a psychology which is strictly conversational is out of fashion is that Szasz (primarily)and others have already deconstructed its moral and scientific pretensions, so there isn't much left.

Recommendation: read Thomas Szasz.

Rating:
Summary: the campaign for reason
Review: Brilliant book. It describes in careful detail the basis (or lack thereof) for that universally accepted mantra stating that mental disorders are due to a "biochemical imbalance in the brain". It should be of interest to both professionals and the general public, and as it is written in a clear and coherent manner, should appeal to both audiences.

'Blaming the Brain' is at odds with an enormously powerful mental health establishment that has come to espouse biological reductionism not only at the expense of any attention to the human, but also with utter disregard of science.

Independant thinkers have always been regarded with suspicion and hostility by the establishment of their time. I suppose one can find some comfort in the fact that while the members of the Inquisition have long since died and turned to dust, the earth continues to revolve around the sun, and not the other way around.

Rating:
Summary: Psychicatric Madness
Review: Elliot Valenstein's book is at the same time informative, provocative and disturbing. He has analyzed a dense literature and distilled from it key ideas that run counter to the current dogma of psychiatry and other "helping professions," the currently fashionable view that so-called mental illnesses of many types are brain disorders. Valenstein prepares the reader with a well-crafted history of biological psychiatry, followed by a knoweldgable and intelligent critical analysis of the literature. This is a book that deserves a wide readership but, alas, will probably not receive it. The juggernaut of the brain psychiatrists and their sympathizers is just too overwhelming to give Valenstein's book the careful reading it deserves. I look forward to his next work, which I hope would examine the related claims for a biological basis of ADHD, homosexuality, alcoholism, and the like.

Rating:
Summary: It's not a brain disease
Review: Everone who are involved in helping people with psychological disorders should read this excellent book. I have for the last 18 years been working as a specialist in peak performance and mental training in Norway. 3 years ago I became sertified as a diagnostic Thought Field Therapy therapist. This new revolusionary therapy founded by PhD Dr. Roger Callahan proves that Elliot Valenstein is right. The fundamental reason for mental disorders are not a physical problem in the brain. If it had been so, people would have been as afraid when they water their plants as when they are when they are thinking on a phobia. Obviously you can not alter physical parts of your brain only by thinking of something else than you are afraid of. Almost all Psychological disorders are related to what you are thinking of or in connection with your thoughts. As more than 100 million tests at Princeton University have shown, all thoughts travel as waves and they travel out of our head. Callahan Tecniques-Thought Field Therapy has the last 10 years had a stunning 90 % degree of success due to that fact. "Blaiming the brain" gives us (who are not impressed by the the successrate the medicine industry has on curing mental disorders) a lot of very good facts to present in the many debates that will come the next years. Thank you, mr. Valenstein !

Rating:
Summary: The Marketing of Mental Ilness
Review: In the 1940's psychiatrists began the effort to convince humankind that mental illness was an epidemic - a "disease" which could strike anyone at any time. This fear mongering has continued unabated for 50 years despite a complete absence of any solid evidence that mental and emotional problems are caused by brain pathology. Valenstein argues convincingly that psychiatric chemical imbalance theories are seriously flawed and reveals the marketing and hype behind the push to convince us that life is essentially a disease. Psychiatric treatment leads invariably and inevitably to diminishing mental and physical health. Read Valenstein's book and you'll gain a great deal of insight into why that is true.

Rating:
Summary: The Marketing of Mental Ilness
Review: In the 1940's psychiatrists began the effort to convince humankind that mental illness was an epidemic - a "disease" which could strike anyone at any time. This fear mongering has continued unabated for 50 years despite a complete absence of any solid evidence that mental and emotional problems are caused by brain pathology. Valenstein argues convincingly that psychiatric chemical imbalance theories are seriously flawed and reveals the marketing and hype behind the push to convince us that life is essentially a disease. Psychiatric treatment leads invariably and inevitably to diminishing mental and physical health. Read Valenstein's book and you'll gain a great deal of insight into why that is true.

Rating:
Summary: Truth that few will want to hear
Review: This book is academically excellent and substantianted well beyond what should have even been necessary. However, it clearly remains "news" that most patients will resist. While the author does a wonderful job of explaining the motivations for medical companies/drug manufacturers, etc. to continue to preach neurobiological causes for most/many emotional disturbances, the patient population is likely the group most resistant to hearing its truth. (...) patients try hard to believe there is a physical cause rather than emotional and to hand our brains over to someone to "fix" rather than risk partnering with a good doctor to mutually share in the work of recovery. I have recommended this book to several "hard sell" patient-friends who comphrehend its WORDS, but fail to accept the reality. Amazingly, the author is not trying to persuade those who don't want to hear, but seems content to provide informative documentation for those of us who already understand his point. And fascinating reading it is. He clearly knows the uphill battle he's undertaken, and doesn't prostelytize or belittle in his efforts to explain. Thanks, doctor, for a mature book about much that many of us simply aren't ready to face yet. Hang in there. Truth lasts longer than denial. - Janine Baker, author of Tales From A Thousand And One Freudian Nights

Rating:
Summary: Yes, you should read this book.
Review: This is the definitive exposure, by a working brain researcher, of the scientific frauds being used to sell psychiatric drugs. Its thoughtful investigation of the absence of relationship between brain science and mental illness is startling.

Rating:
Summary: Controversial, possibly, but a wonderful and important book!
Review: Valenstein does it again! After his insightful book on the history of psychosurgery, the author, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Michigan University, examines the biochemical theories of mental disorders. In a well-written book, Valenstein (a) describes the history of the major "theories" relating mental disease to brain function, and the history of the main psychotherapeutic drugs; (b) the empirical and logical basis of the claims that mental disorders are caused by chemical inbalances in the brain; and (c) the social, economic, and cultural contexts surrounding the use of psychothrapeutic drugs. Although not a physician, psychiatrist, or clinical psychologist, I admire the book for its extensive review of the scientific literature, for its success at explaining the main ideas about mental disease and brain science to the nonspecialist, and for its thoughtful conclusions. Perhaps the book's greatest virtue is to remind us of how ignorant we still are about the causes of schizophrenia, manic-depressive disorder, and many other mental conditions. In a word, read this excellent book. The writing is also elegant.