In the 1970s, a small group of leading psychiatrists met behind closed doors and literally rewrote the book on their profession. Revising and greatly expanding the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM for short), they turned what had been a thin, spiral-bound handbook into a hefty tome. Almost overnight the number of diagnoses exploded. The result was a windfall for the pharmaceutical industry and a massive conflict of interest for psychiatry at large. This spellbinding book is the first behind-the-scenes account of what really happened and why.
With unprecedented access to the American Psychiatric Association archives and previously classified memos from drug company executives, Christopher Lane unearths the disturbing truth: with little scientific justification and sometimes hilariously improbable rationales, hundreds of conditions - among them shyness - are now defined as psychiatric disorders and considered treatable with drugs. Lane shows how long-standing disagreements within the profession set the stage for these changes, and he assesses who has gained and what's been lost in the process of medicalizing emotions. With dry wit, he demolishes the façade of objective research behind which the revolution in psychiatry has hidden. He finds a profession riddled with backbiting and jockeying, and even more troubling, a profession increasingly beholden to its corporate sponsors.
The book is published by Yale University Press. Selected as a 2008 AAUP University Press Book.
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"If everyone read this book, noone would take antidepressants. Read this book. Don't take antidepressants." — Cns (4 out of 5 stars)
"If everyone read this book, noone would take antidepressants. Read this book. Don't take antidepressants."
" A bit polemical, but lucid, revealing. Disturbing. "
" Nothing new here really. It's basically a critique of the process by which the DSM was formed. The author mainly focuses on the DSM-3 and rarely references the subsequent editions. "
" "Read" should read "skimmed". More academic than I thought, I missed most of the early chapters on analysis and focussed on the DTC ads for Paxil etc. section. Still kinda dull! I like my academics anecdotal, yo. "
" disturbing expose on how small-minded people made a normal condition into an "illness". worse on how the drug companies manipulated everyone after-the-fact. but this is dry prose that tells a story we should all already know. "
" I started this years ago and i still haven't managed to finish it. Nice topic, but could be covered better in something a bit shorter. Who was it who said something about so many good essays being turned into bad books? "
Derek Perkins is a professional narrator and voice actor. He has earned numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration, as well as numerous Society of Voice Arts nominations. AudioFile magazine named him a Best Voice consecutively in 2014, 2015, and 2016. Augmented by a knowledge of three foreign languages and a facility with accents, he has narrated numerous titles in a wide range of fiction and nonfiction genres.
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