People, Not Psychiatry

People, Not Psychiatry
Author: Michael Barnett
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2018-09-21
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 042986471X

Originally published in 1973, this book is about people and psychiatry. About people who rejected psychiatry as it was generally practised at the time, people who sought for and found alternative ways of caring for and healing one another. The author, who had been active in radical alternatives to psychiatry for some time, offers us a programme based not on drugs, repression and a ‘questionable’ expertise, but on human caring, greater awareness of the body, deeper communication between persons and a willingness to let the emotions flow. It is a challenging alternative which came at a time when the viability of scientific, theoretical and chemical approaches to distress were being questioned at all levels of society. This alternative includes the new direct methods of healing (making whole) such as Encounter, Gestalt, Bioenergetics, Psychofantasy – methods that do not do things to people but allow them to feel their way into change through experiment, flow and choice. The main focus of the book is People, not Psychiatry (PNP), the network set up by the author in 1969. PNP is open to all, and people in it help one another in times of stress and crisis, if they are asked to and when they are needed. One of the main assets of these networks is that they are an alternative and they are there. The book tells the story of PNP’s birth and growth. It is a personal story, a moving story, a story about people. In addition, the book contains some lively theoretical discussion, both simple and clear, in the course of which the author tentatively offers his own theory of neurosis – that many people become victims of the primitive logic patterns laid down in infancy, patterns that become reinforced through fear and habit and have to be dissolved or replaced if we are to enjoy a full, healthy, free-flowing life. The book is directed at doctors, patients, consultants, nurses, psychologists, social workers, therapists, in fact anyone involved in any way in the field of psychiatry. It is also offered to all those whom psychiatry touches, that it to say – everyone.

The Myth of Mental Illness

The Myth of Mental Illness
Author: Thomas S. Szasz
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2011-07-12
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0062104748

“The landmark book that argued that psychiatry consistently expands its definition of mental illness to impose its authority over moral and cultural conflict.” — New York Times The 50th anniversary edition of the most influential critique of psychiatry every written, with a new preface on the age of Prozac and Ritalin and the rise of designer drugs, plus two bonus essays. Thomas Szasz's classic book revolutionized thinking about the nature of the psychiatric profession and the moral implications of its practices. By diagnosing unwanted behavior as mental illness, psychiatrists, Szasz argues, absolve individuals of responsibility for their actions and instead blame their alleged illness. He also critiques Freudian psychology as a pseudoscience and warns against the dangerous overreach of psychiatry into all aspects of modern life.

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump
Author: Bandy X. Lee
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2019-03-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1250256283

As this bestseller predicted, Trump has only grown more erratic and dangerous as the pressures on him mount. This new edition includes new essays bringing the book up to date—because this is still not normal. Originally released in fall 2017, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump was a runaway bestseller. Alarmed Americans and international onlookers wanted to know: What is wrong with him? That question still plagues us. The Trump administration has proven as chaotic and destructive as its opponents feared, and the man at the center of it all remains a cipher. Constrained by the APA’s “Goldwater rule,” which inhibits mental health professionals from diagnosing public figures they have not personally examined, many of those qualified to weigh in on the issue have shied away from discussing it at all. The public has thus been left to wonder whether he is mad, bad, or both. The prestigious mental health experts who have contributed to the revised and updated version of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump argue that their moral and civic "duty to warn" supersedes professional neutrality. Whatever affects him, affects the nation: From the trauma people have experienced under the Trump administration to the cult-like characteristics of his followers, he has created unprecedented mental health consequences across our nation and beyond. With eight new essays (about one hundred pages of new material), this edition will cover the dangerous ramifications of Trump's unnatural state. It’s not all in our heads. It’s in his.

Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness

Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness
Author: Anne Harrington
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2019-04-16
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1324001976

Mind Fixers tells the history of psychiatry’s quest to understand the biological basis of mental illness and asks where we need to go from here. In Mind Fixers, Anne Harrington, author of The Cure Within, explores psychiatry’s repeatedly frustrated struggle to understand mental disorder in biomedical terms. She shows how the stalling of early twentieth century efforts in this direction allowed Freudians and social scientists to insist, with some justification, that they had better ways of analyzing and fixing minds. But when the Freudians overreached, they drove psychiatry into a state of crisis that a new “biological revolution” was meant to alleviate. Harrington shows how little that biological revolution had to do with breakthroughs in science, and why the field has fallen into a state of crisis in our own time. Mind Fixers makes clear that psychiatry’s waxing and waning biological enthusiasms have been shaped not just by developments in the clinic and lab, but also by a surprising range of social factors, including immigration, warfare, grassroots activism, and assumptions about race and gender. Government programs designed to empty the state mental hospitals, acrid rivalries between different factions in the field, industry profit mongering, consumerism, and an uncritical media have all contributed to the story as well. In focusing particularly on the search for the biological roots of schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar disorder, Harrington underscores the high human stakes for the millions of people who have sought medical answers for their mental suffering. This is not just a story about doctors and scientists, but about countless ordinary people and their loved ones. A clear-eyed, evenhanded, and yet passionate tour de force, Mind Fixers recounts the past and present struggle to make mental illness a biological problem in order to lay the groundwork for creating a better future, both for those who suffer and for those whose job it is to care for them.

Common Mental Health Disorders

Common Mental Health Disorders
Author: National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (Great Britain)
Publisher: RCPsych Publications
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2011
Genre: Health services accessibility
ISBN: 9781908020314

Bringing together treatment and referral advice from existing guidelines, this text aims to improve access to services and recognition of common mental health disorders in adults and provide advice on the principles that need to be adopted to develop appropriate referral and local care pathways.

Mind, State and Society

Mind, State and Society
Author: George Ikkos
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 435
Release: 2021-06-24
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1009040243

Mind, State and Society examines the reforms in psychiatry and mental health services in Britain during 1960–2010, when de-institutionalisation and community care coincided with the increasing dominance of ideologies of social liberalism, identity politics and neoliberal economics. Featuring contributions from leading academics, policymakers, mental health clinicians, service users and carers, it offers a rich and integrated picture of mental health, covering experiences from children to older people; employment to homelessness; women to LGBTQ+; refugees to black and minority ethnic groups; and faith communities and the military. It asks important questions such as: what happened to peoples' mental health? What was it like to receive mental health services? And how was it to work in or lead clinical care? Seeking answers to questions within the broader social-political context, this book considers the implications for modern society and future policy. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Coercion as Cure

Coercion as Cure
Author: Thomas Szasz
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2011-12-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1412808952

Understanding the history of psychiatry requires an accurate view of its function and purpose. In this provocative new study, Szasz challenges conventional beliefs about psychiatry. He asserts that, in fact, psychiatrists are not concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of bona fide illnesses. Psychiatric tradition, social expectation, and the law make it clear that coercion is the profession's determining characteristic. Psychiatrists may "diagnose" or "treat" people without their consent or even against their clearly expressed wishes, and these involuntary psychiatric interventions are as different as are sexual relations between consenting adults and the sexual violence we call "rape." But the point is not merely the difference between coerced and consensual psychiatry, but to contrast them. The term "psychiatry" ought to be applied to one or the other, but not both. As long as psychiatrists and society refuse to recognize this, there can be no real psychiatric historiography. The coercive character of psychiatry was more apparent in the past than it is now. Then, insanity was synonymous with unfitness for liberty. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, a new type of psychiatric relationship developed, when people experiencing so-called "nervous symptoms," sought help. This led to a distinction between two kinds of mental diseases: neuroses and psychoses. Persons who complained about their own behavior were classified as neurotic, whereas persons about whose behavior others complained were classified as psychotic. The legal, medical, psychiatric, and social denial of this simple distinction and its far-reaching implications undergirds the house of cards that is modern psychiatry. Coercion as Cure is the most important book by Szasz since his landmark The Myth of Mental Illness.

Mental Disorder and Crime

Mental Disorder and Crime
Author: Sheilagh Hodgins
Publisher: SAGE Publications, Incorporated
Total Pages: 400
Release: 1992-12-29
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780803950238

Contributors to this volume present and discuss new data which suggest that major mental disorder substantially increases the risk of violent crime. These findings come at a crucial time, since those who suffer from mental disorders are increasingly living in the community, rather than in institutions. The book describes the magnitude and complexity of the problem and offers hope that humane, effective intervention can prevent violent crime being committed by the seriously mentally disordered.

Unhinged

Unhinged
Author: Daniel Carlat
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2010-05-18
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1416596356

In this stirring and beautifully written wake-up call, psychiatrist Daniel Carlat writes with bracing honesty about how psychiatry has so largely forsaken the practice of talk therapy for the seductive—and more lucrative—practice of simply prescribing drugs, with a host of deeply troubling consequences. Psychiatrist Daniel Carlat has noticed a pattern plaguing his profession. Psychiatrists have settled for treating symptoms rather than causes, embracing the apparent medical rigor of DSM diagnoses and prescription in place of learning the more challenging craft of therapeutic counseling, gaining only limited understanding of their patients’ lives. Talk therapy takes time, whereas the fifteen-minute "med check" allows for more patients and more insurance company reimbursement. Yet, DSM diagnoses, he shows, are premised on a good deal less science than we would think. Writing from an insider’s perspective, with refreshing forthrightness about his own daily struggles as a practitioner, Dr. Carlat shares a wealth of stories from his own practice and those of others that demonstrate the glaring shortcomings of the standard fifteen-minute patient visit. He also reveals the dangers of rampant diagnoses of bipolar disorder, ADHD, and other "popular" psychiatric disorders, and exposes the risks of the cocktails of medications so many patients are put on. Especially disturbing are the terrible consequences of overprescription of drugs to children of ever younger ages. Taking us on a tour of the world of pharmaceutical marketing, he also reveals the inner workings of collusion between psychiatrists and drug companies. Concluding with a road map for exactly how the profession should be reformed, Unhinged is vital reading for all those in treatment or considering it, as well as a stirring call to action for the large community of psychiatrists themselves. As physicians and drug companies continue to work together in disquieting and harmful ways, and as diagnoses—and misdiagnoses—of mental disorders skyrocket, it’s essential that Dr. Carlat’s bold call for reform is heeded.