| Publication |
New York, Basic Books, 2003.
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| Description |
xviii, 334pBlack spine
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| Summary/Abstract |
Schizophrenics in the United States currently fare worse than patients in the world’s poorest countries. In Mad in America, medical journalist Robert 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. The widespread use of lobotomies in the 1920s and 1930s gave way in the 1950s to electroshock and a wave of new drugs. In what is perhaps Whitaker’s most damning revelation, Mad in America examines how drug companies in the 1980s and 1990s skewed their studies to prove that new antipsychotic drugs were more effective than the old, while keeping patients in the dark about dangerous side effects.
A haunting, deeply compassionate book, now revised with a new introduction — Mad in America raises important questions about our obligations to the mad, the meaning of “insanity,” and what we value most about the human mind.
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| Contents |
Preface
Acknowledgements
Part one: The original Bedlam (1750-1900)
1. Bedlam in medicine
2. The healing hand of kindness
Part two: The darkest era (1900-1950)
3. Unfit to breed
4. Too much intelligence
5. Brain damage as miracle therapy
Part three: Back to Bedlam (1950-1990s)
6. Modern-day alchemy
7. The patient's reality
8. The story we told ourselves
9. Shame of a nation
10. The Nuremberg code doesn't apply here
Part four: Mad medicine today (1990s-Present)
11. Not so atypical
Epilogue
Notes
Index
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| Standard Number |
9780738207995 Pb.
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