Anatomy of an Epidemic - The Explosion of Mental Illness in the West

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Robert Whitaker discusses his book 'Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America'

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.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• psychiatry
• Interview
• mental
• health
• depression
• bipolar
• Major Depressive Disorder
• Mental Health
• Stress
• Bipolar Disorder
• Help
• Therapy
• Recovery
• dsm

[srugel44]

One of my friends pulled an 'intervention' on me about my "mental health issues."

He is on many drugs: prozac, abilify, xanax for those 'stressful' days, etc. Of course, he mixes this shit with alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, cold tabs, etc.

So he was convinced that because I can actually feel sadness, or get angry about things, or have these pesky human emotions - I must need therapy and drugs. He said "You CAN be happy, there are drugs that can help you."

He's no longer on my social calendar.

[Spencerianism]

The bottom line is about money. The truly sad part is that money is a fictional character in society. So basically we created a fictional monster that actually destroyed us.

[sarahparsons87]

@M1thotyn...Clearly you have a disregard for taking pharmaceutical medication. If you read my comment properly you would realise that i said i attempted to get better without medication but it didn't work. I didn't say that "people need to do drugs from time to time". I said that our brains are *mainly* physical objects and the best way to manipulate them is through chemical means. I'm afraid your comment doesn't make sense to me. Maybe you should study medicine before replying to me.

[M1thotyn]

@sarahparsons87 And what do you mean by "mainly"? Are you saying that there is part of the brain that is not physical? That's not possible. I have many other physical organs. Sometimes my left kidney doesn't function right, should I just start taking drugs that impair the normal functioning of my kidneys and see if it helps? It would be the same thing that you suggest we do to our brains.

[M1thotyn]

"Our brains are mainly physical objects and therefore sometimes need some form of physical treatment" You just said that because the brain is physical, people need to do drugs from time to time. Absolutely ridiculous. Psychiatric drugs are not brain medicines. They are in fact psychotropic drugs. They do not work be mending, they work by impairing perfectly healthy and normal biology. This is a fact, read: Initiation and Adaptation: A Paradigm for Understanding Psychotropic Drug Action.

[sarahparsons87]

developing depression and genuinely need chemicals, put aside the fact that they are man-made, because their brains simply don't produce enough of the lacking chemical or are not structured strongly enough genetically to fight off a bout of strong emotional reaction. These unavoidable circumstances need help, not condemnation by the media and the resulting cynically motivated reaction of a minority of ill-informed, mislead, ignorant people. I hope the image surrounding anti-depressents improves.

[sarahparsons87]

depression, medication was the right treatment to give myself at that time. To carry on as i was wasn't working and could have ended up much worse.Our brains are mainly physical objects and therefore sometimes need some form of physical treatment and being as it is not possible to manually handle or manipulate out brains (not like that would have much effect anyway, lol) we need to manipulate in them in a way that is possible, which is chemically. Due to genetics some people are more prone to..

[sarahparsons87]

iron tablets but i do occasionally now and have also improved my diet because i realised eventually (after months of denial) that i actually had slight anemia. I could have exercised as much as i liked or improved my positive thinking but i wouldn't have increased the amount of iron in my body by doing these things. I needed to do something about it immediately and do the right thing - in this case taking iron tablets, at least to begin with before improving my diet -and in the case of..

[sarahparsons87]

(especially in the cases of SSRI's being prescribed because it is usually a lack of this chemical which causes most cases of depression) and will inhibit the over production of dopamine which will restore the chemical inbalance present in the patients brain. Chemical inbalances happen in our bodies all of the time. For example if a woman doesn't eat enough iron or supplement her diet with iron tablets she will likely end up anemic because of the monthly periods she has. I never used to take..

[sarahparsons87]

have been relying upon the tablets for the past ten years or so and have never attempted to withdraw from them and therefore don't know what life is like without them and need to continue taking them in order to feel 'right'. The media will often call anti-depressents 'happy pills' and this gives them an extremely negetive image. When only used in severe cases anti-depressents are beneficial in the fact that they can restore the lack of serotonin in the patients brain..