Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs Comments by John Breeding

psychetruth
July 23, 2010
Dr. John Breeding give a book review of Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America By Author Robert Whitaker.

Robert Whitaker's Anatomy of an Epidemic reveals the damage that can and very often does result from long-term use of psychotropic drugs, and, along with it, the alarming rise in chronic mental illness in this country since such drugs as Thorazine were introduced in the 1950s. Because this drug could cause tardive dyskinesia and other permanent nervous system damage, the pharmaceutical industry got to work on new generations of drugs that are being used now.

The rise in drug use corresponds with psychiatry staking a renewed claim to therapeutic expertise and market share, which had begun to erode due to competition from counselors, social workers and others (see the Selling of DSM by Kirk and Kutchins -- [...]-- and Making Us Crazy by the same authors). The prescription pad, and the power of academic psychiatry in collaboration with Big Pharma, allowed psychiatry to open up a very large market, one that today seems to encompass the entire population.