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Summary: The Mad are Treated with Madness!
Review: "Mad in America" is heart breaking. The expose examines the paradox: "Schizophrenic outcomes in the United States and other developed countries today are much worse than in the poor countries of the world."
Journalist Robert Whitaker showcases the first hospital for the insane. In 1751 the Quakers began a moral treatment-exercise, social activities and work-that had remarkable cure rates (unreachable with today's care).
By mid-1800s, the medical field, fearful of losing power, began to intervene. Whitaker elucidates the shift of power from humane treatment to "enlightened" medical treatments such as insulin coma therapy, ECT, lobotomies and now, mind-numbing neuroleptics. The suffering of the mentally ill has been compounded as the current sadistic milieu uses them as a cash cow.
Whitaker's writing paints the horror all too well. One begins to wonder if the guilty psychiatrists, researchers and pharmaceutical companies ever look in the mirror.
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Summary: A topnotch journalist exposes a national disgrace
Review: *****
"Mad in America" is a must-read book for anyone who cares about our nation's mental health system.Award-winning journalist Robert Whitaker does exactly what a professional journalist is supposed to do: he asks good questions, digs deep for answers, and carefully documents every step of his work. The result is a powerful and provocative book that challenges long-held beliefs, shatters popular myths, and unmasks many sacred cows, including the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI). By taking a painstaking look at the history which predates our current "modern" treatment of the mentally ill, Whitaker shows how we've created the monster that is our present-day system, rife with abuse, neglect, financial corruption and (most shameful of all) medical and scientific fraud of monumental proportions. The conclusion we're compelled to reach is that much of what the psychiatric profession and the pharmaceutical companies have told us (that mental illness is a chronic disease caused by a biochemical imbalance in the brain, for example) is simply a pack of lies -- we've been deceived into supporting a positively harmful system which practically PREVENTS healing, and instead destroys far more lives than it saves. I heartily recommend "Mad in America." This book will send shockwaves through the psychiatric establishment. Buy a copy for yourself, and buy another copy for a mental health professional with integrity and humility -- if you can find one.
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Summary: Neuroleptic Drugs are a Menace, Not a Cure
Review: .
Medical journalist Robert Whitaker is right on the mark in his revelation that neuroleptic drugs (i.e. Haldol, Thorazine, Prolixin, Dyprexa, etc., etc.) and even anti-anxiety drugs and antidepressants do NOT cure schizophrenia or any other form of "mental illness." They merely PRODUCE internal anxiety and a variety of chronic physical illnesses and make patients MORE prone to violence.
Whitaker's findings reveal that peudoneurotic or schizophrenic patients typically are withdrawn, often passive individuals, who do not become violent or assaultive until AFTER they have been professionally treated with psychiatric neuroleptic drugs. While the psychiatrically drugged patient may appear to be sedated, he/she is actually suffering severe, often unbearable inner anxiety, making the provoked patient more prone to violence.
Whitaker focuses on LSD studies conducted by Dr. Paul Hock, New York State Psychiatric Institute, from 1949 to 1952, on more than 60 mentally ill patients. The LSD "heightened the schizophrenic disorganization of the individual." The studies indicated that LSD and mescaline could trigger full-blown schizohrenic episodes in pseudoneurotic patients, who, prior to the experiment did not display many signs of schizophrenic thinking.
Whitaker's findings indicate that exploitative, abusive psychiatric caretakers, including psychiatrists, as well as psychiatric aids, often provoke "sedated" patients into violence, then increase their drug dosages.
I know that what Whitaker says is factual. I myself have been a victim of psychiatric abuse of the worst kind right here in America in the 20th and 21st centuries, and I have witnessed the abuse of other patients. The psychiatric treatment at the VA hospital in West Los Angeles is as irresponsible as in any other facility in my opinion. For years, the Brentwood VA psychiatric hospital has been used by pharmaceutical companies and UCLA interns for conducting psychotropic drug experiments on veteran patients, destroying their nervous systems and their lives.
Some of the damage these neuroleptics cause to the nervous system is irreversible!
Whitaker reveals that pharmaceutical corporations "pay off" medical journal publishers and psychiatrists to minimize the dangers of psychiatric drugs and to glorify and exaggerate the benefits.
From my own personal experience, there are NO benefits to be derived from taking ANY psychiatric drug. Balanced nutrition, regular exercise, and freedom from being locked up in a psychiatric ward (torture chamber) is the only reasonable prescription for dealing with any diagnosed psychiatric condition.
As has previously been said, psychiatric drugs are good business for drug companies and BAD MEDICINE for treating schizophrenia or any other diagnosed mental illness.
Many thanks to Whitaker for his courage in speaking out.
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Summary: Undoubtedly one of the wrost books written on this topic
Review: As a patient, I find this book extremely biased and unhelpful. Mr Whitaker chose to focus on the negatives (e.g. side effects of psychiatric drugs-all drugs have side effects not only psychiatric drugs). Drugs help me tremendously. Without them, I will not be here writing this. I wish people like the author would stop dwelling on the past-i.e. the history of maltreatment of patients. Things are extremely different now, thanks to the advances in knowledge.
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Summary: The expose psychiatry has needed for years
Review: As a psychiatrist since 1947, I cannot praise sufficiently Robert Whitaker's superb expose of how my specialty's intoxication with drugs has destroyed its ability to help its patients. He describes the fraudulence .of the entire psychopharmaceutical revolution, and exposes hidden facts, such as the worsenng treatment results in schizophrenia, the most serious mental disorder, and how those who have recovered from thse disorders did so for the most part without drugs. It is unfortunate .that drug-company-influenced professionals have prevented this important book from getting the major publication reviews which it certainly desrves....
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Summary: Psychiatry needs to rebut this point for point
Review: I am surprised how many negative reviews claim that this book is sloppy, unscientific, romantic, biased. To these reviewers I say: let biopsychiatry rebut the allegations of this book point for point, and we'll see who is sloppy, romantic, unscientific, biased. Biopsychiatry has tons of money - the drug companies spend over 20 billion dollars a year on promotion. If they truly want to correct the "misinformation" in this book (and others, like David Healy's new book, Let them Eat Prozac), they have the money to try. If the books of Whitaker and others are as dangerous and misleading as biopsychiatry claims, one would think they'd be eager to rebut them fact for fact. But they do not. Professionals and the public need to demand an end to the evasion.
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Summary: A challenging book
Review: I am writing this review because I found none of the previous reviews very helpful. Whitaker has proposed an entirely different way of looking at the ways that America treats schizophrenia. It has some similarities to the arguments that one hears from some consumer/survivor groups in that it is strongly and radically critical of current American psychiatry. However Whitaker does a superficially plausible job of criticizing the professional literature that purports to show that the anti-psychotic medications (both "typical" and "atypical") are effective treatments. Is he right in his criticisms? Although I am a mental health professional researcher and have worked in the field for over 20 years, I don't know. But it seems to me that it is to his credit that I can't discount it right away. He might be wrong but it is the most coherent critique of biological psychiatry that I have seen.
If I had schizophrenia, I would not decide that I should go off of my medications because of what Whitaker has written but I would look for more of an answer from my psychiatrist than a bland assurance that science has shown these medications to work.
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Summary: given the credentials of the author....
Review: I think the main criticisms of this book come from those who suggest the author has no authority to write such a book without a scientific background. To the contary, psychology and psychiatry are not exact sciences and the treatment of people by the medical field is not necessarily a scientific topic. The author does an excellent job providing a social history of mental illness in America and discussing medicines/shock treatment as related to motivations of corporations and doctors. Having had a grandmother who lived the history and progression of mental health care in America (she was in and out of hospitals from 1950 until her death in 1999), I can now see how she was a victim of trends. Putting her life and treatments up against the history detailed in this book makes perfect sense. She fits into the timeline. I think the research done for this book is solid and intriguing.
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Summary: This book turned out to be a disappointment
Review: I was excited about reading this book in the beginning. However, as I was reading it, I found it to be somewhat uninformative. This wouldh have been a very good book had it been published in the 40's or 50's. Unfortunately, it is totally out-dated for today's readers.
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Summary: If the whole country only knew.
Review: In 1968 I and a friend decided to get out of the Army by pretending we were crazy. We ended up in a major Army psych ward on the west coast. I saw first hand how patients looked before and directly after shock treatment and heavy psych drugs. Although my psychiatrist knew I was faking it (but couldn't prove it) he casually suggested that "maybe some shock treatment might help," while watching me for any reaction. My stomach turned into a knot as I tried to suppress the terror I felt when I realized he could do just that and there was nothing I could do about it.
That relatively mild experience helps me to get a little idea of the utter horror some of the patients I saw and those in this book must have felt.
It's difficult to believe that in this country where "all men are created equal" our fellow citizens have been treated as they have simply because they made the mistake of going to a phychiatrist for help. It should read "all men minus the mentally ill or those we consider unfit are created equal."
This book should be a wake up call to all of those artists, dreamers, eccentrics, religious believers, minorities or any other groups that might be considered different. To one of these phychiatrists you just may have a delusional disorder (because you don't think like everyone else) and should be put on medication to release you from your "mental illness."
If you value your personal freedom and our way of life in this country, please read this book and tell others to read it.
The keywords "alternative mental health" brings up some useful alternatives for mental health that are not mind numbing.
Also, "niacin and schizophrenia" is good.
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