Product Description

A riveting social and medical history of madness in America, from the seventeenth century to today. . In Mad in America, medical journalist Robert Whitaker reveals an astounding truth: Schizophrenics in the United States currently fare worse than patients in the world's poorest countries, and quite possibly worse than asylum patients did in the early nineteenth century. With a muckraker's passion, 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. Tracing over three centuries of "cures" for madness, Whitaker shows how medical therapies have been used to silence patients and dull their minds. He tells of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century practices of "spinning" the insane, extracting their teeth, ovaries, and intestines, and submerging patients in freezing water. The "cures" in the 1920s and 1930s were no less barbaric as eugenic attitudes toward the mentally ill led to brain-damaging lobotomies and electroshock therapy. Perhaps Whitaker's most damning revelation, however, is his report of how drug companies in the 1980s and 1990s skewed their studies in an effort to prove the effectiveness of their products. Based on exhaustive research culled from old patient medical records, historical accounts, numerous interviews, and hundreds of government documents, Mad in America raises important questions about our obligations to the mad, what it means to be "insane," and what we value most about the human mind.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #93314 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

About the Author
Robert Whitaker's articles on the me ntally ill and the drug industry have won several awards, including the George Polk Award for Medica l Writing and the National Association of Science Writers' award for best magazine article. A series he co-wrote for the Boston Globe was named a fina list for the Pulitzer Prize in 1998. He lives in C ambridge, Massachusetts.

Customer Reviews

Interesting, informative and challenging.
This book is a highly enjoyable read that approaches its subject matter from a chronological approach. Its argument is basically that the prevailing socialital attitude to the mentally ill is far more important in determining their treatment than any 'advances' in the field of psychiatry, psychology or nursing. The author then goes on to show how all care systems which beleive that mental illness is a disease or can be modelled as such invariably involve inhumane treatment.

The book begins with the moral treatment pioneers in the early life of american society. It details how that method became perverted and debased before it collapsed into punitative asylums. Then the author follows the treatments, the beleifs and actions of our care systems. He shows the rise of eugenics and how the history of mental health care is riven with cruelty.

This book is disturbing, surprising reading. By taking a chronological approach the book often details familiar things in unfamiliar ways. For example when the neuroleptic medications (now used near universally in treatment) were first introduced they were not at all advertised as 'treatment' for mental illness rather than as a form of chemical sedation similar in aim to giving patients a lobotomy.

The book closes by debating whether their has been any true advance in mental health care. Odd as this argument may seem the book makes a compelling case to reconsider our treatments and our methods.

In all, although the book is American, I would recommend this book for anyone with a connection to the mental health system who is wondering quite how it came to look as it does today.

Clearly Speaking
Having sat on both sides of the fence in the field of mental health, it is easy to get lost in this book. However (and certainly without prejudice) I feel it only fair to say that although it is an excellent read on a professional level, this book could do with toning down a little to allow the wider audience - (families, carers, sufferers) those people REALLY affected by what the book is about - to be able to follow its contents more affectively.

That is not to undermine the professional opproach this book takes and how that style in itself reinforces the seriousness of the atrocities set out on its pages. I have been gravely emoted by the additional information 'Mad in America' has added to my own pot of knowledge. I have known people who have experienced some of the barbaric treatments described.

I have known people to suddenly die on drugs with cautionary labels stating that they 'may cause sudden death'. The 'victims' (and I label them as such with conviction) are not always fully aware of the side affects these drugs will create and it seems most doctors are unwilling to listen to the patient when it comes to resolving their sufferings and concerns. Quite simply, there IS no positive/beneficial treatment in place other than a hidden handful of small estblishments that offer short term respite and holistic treatment in minute doses to a select few. The funds are instead cosistantly pumped into psychiatric drugs and meaningless research. Even aftercare is slowly dissolving; being replaced instead by support groups that are sub-standard and underfunded (other than by those service users able to afford the compulsary fees now being enforced).

It is essential that more books of this caliber make it to the book shelves and continue to argue against the present ethics of psychiatry. 'Mad in America is an informative read that provides a clear and accurate description of psychiatric history and how the entire psychiatry system has turned to its darker past for solutions. It is a starting point to give leverage for change, and it is certainly not a bad place to start.

Brilliant, important, meticulously researched
I have been working to try to help correct some of the problems in the mental health field for more than two decades and have written extensively about them myself, so I have done a great deal of reading about these subjects. Robert Whitaker's work is essential reading, articulate, and scrupulously documented. His writing style is compelling and clear.
I note that another reviewer on amazon.co.uk asserts that Whitaker is associated with the Citizens Commission for Human Rights, which, the reviewer asserts, is "said to be a front group for" the Church of Scientology. Actually, similar claims have been made about me, and those claims I know to be as utterly false with regard to Robert Whitaker as with regard to me. It is unfortunate and very frustrating -- and sometimes frightening -- that any of us who raise questions about anything in the mental health system are often assumed erroneously to be involved with the CCHR or C of S. Actually, by the way, the CCHR website includes the explicit information that they are associated with the C of S. Many people wish they had known that earlier. The CCHR and C of S, like anyone or any group, can take a certain amount of material and put it on their websites, which can give people the mistaken impression that those whom they quote are ASSOCIATED with or SUPPORT or ENDORSE the owners of the websites, and that may or may not be true. In the cases of the CCHR and C of S using material from Robert Whitaker, as from me, use of our material does NOT mean that we were asked for permission to use it on their websites or that we would have agreed if we had any legal control over the matter...which no one does.
It is unfortunate that [...] allows reviewers to make false claims about authors' affiliations. This kind of claim is both untrue and very damaging.