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Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America

Robert Whitaker

Kindle Edition | Pages: 418 pages

Rating: 4.17 | 3109 Users | 411 Reviews

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Now with bonus material, including a new foreword and afterword with updated research

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? Every day, 1,100 adults and children are added to the government disability rolls because they have become newly disabled by mental illness, with this epidemic spreading most rapidly among our nation’s children. What is going on?
 
Anatomy of an Epidemic challenges readers to think through that question themselves. First, Whitaker investigates what is known today about the biological causes of mental disorders. Do psychiatric medications fix “chemical imbalances” in the brain, or do they, in fact, create them? Researchers spent decades studying that question, and by the late 1980s, they had their answer. Readers will be startled—and dismayed—to discover what was reported in the scientific journals.
 
Then comes the scientific query at the heart of this book: During the past fifty years, when investigators looked at how psychiatric drugs affected long-term outcomes, what did they find? Did they discover that the drugs help people stay well? Function better? Enjoy good physical health? Or did they find that these medications, for some paradoxical reason, increase the likelihood that people will become chronically ill, less able to function well, more prone to physical illness?
 
This is the first book to look at the merits of psychiatric medications through the prism of long-term results. Are long-term recovery rates higher for medicated or unmedicated schizophrenia patients? Does taking an antidepressant decrease or increase the risk that a depressed person will become disabled by the disorder? Do bipolar patients fare better today than they did forty years ago, or much worse? When the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) studied the long-term outcomes of children with ADHD, did they determine that stimulants provide any benefit?
 
By the end of this review of the outcomes literature, readers are certain to have a haunting question of their own: Why have the results from these long-term studies—all of which point to the same startling conclusion—been kept from the public?
 
In this compelling history, Whitaker also tells the personal stories of children and adults swept up in this epidemic. Finally, he reports on innovative programs of psychiatric care in Europe and the United States that are producing good long-term outcomes. 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.

Identify Containing Books Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America

Title	:	Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America
Author	:	Robert Whitaker
Book Format	:	Kindle Edition
Book Edition	:	Special Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 418 pages
Published	:	April 13th 2010 by Crown
Categories	:	Psychology. Nonfiction. Science. Health. Mental Health. Medicine. Medical

Rating Containing Books Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America

Ratings: 4.17 From 3109 Users | 411 Reviews

Judgment Containing Books Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America

All I can say is: I had NO IDEA!. I'm familiar with the supposed science behind the chemical imbalance theory of psychiatric conditions. I think everyone's heard something along these lines: too much or too little dopamine, or serotonin, or other neurotransmitters can cause psychological problems. The medical basis for "you must be out of whack!" Only trouble is, it isn't known to be true! People aren't tested for, say, dopamine levels, and on the basis of that test given Ritalin. They are given

I found this fascinating read because it was recommended by Scientific American. Once I began I couldn't stop reading it or telling my husband everything about it. So many things I thought I knew about mental illness turn out to be wrong. Any study that has attempted to find a chemical imbalance in a population with schizophrenia or depression has failed to find one. Psychiatric drugs work by causing the brain to function abnormally, not by returning an abnormal brain to a normal state. Over

This book is a damning critique of modern psychiatry in the United States. If this book is true, then many of the things I thought I knew about mental illness are just plain wrong. Whitaker lays out study after study that undermines the current system of care in our country. No studies have been able to prove the "chemical imbalance" argument for antidepressants and neuroleptics. Recovery rates for people with depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in the US are far worse now than the

(NOTE: I did not officially skim the entire book; I had to return it to the library and was getting caught up in some of the more technical parts. It did not help that I was reading Franzen's "Freedom" at the same time, which I couldn't read often or quickly enough. The article that spawned the book by Whitaker is here: www.freedom-center.org/.../anatomy_of.... It's worth your time.) Currently skimming...it's quite troubling. An interview with the author in Salon is a good introduction to the

An excellent (albeit polemical at times) account of the modern history of mental illness in the United States, one whose prevalence has been largely driven (unsurprisingly) by artificial demand created by large pharmaceutical concerns, as well as by plain old backward-thinking. While Anatomy is not a conclusive bit of scientific research, it nevertheless manages to fashion a convincing argument that suggests that our current "chemical imbalance in the brain" paradigm for mental illness is at

Renewed this book from the library twice and read a few other books in the meantime and still couldn't get though it. Wanted to hear his argument but the heavy handedness of the first part made it difficult to get through. Maybe someday I'll get back to it and finish it. Until then, I'll continue to work with people on their emotions and relationships but also using meds when needed. Just because the psych meds we have now don't 'cure' doesn't mean they're not useful to relieve suffering and

This book really shook this psychology major's worldview. I was taught in college that most psychological problems are because of a chemical imbalance in the brain and that psychiatric drugs are a useful and valuable tool in fixing these problems. This book quite convincingly lays out the evidence that this is not true. No researcher has ever been able to prove the "chemical imbalance" theory. Rather, psychiatric drugs create chemical imbalances in the brain (not fix them). The author presents