Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally IllIn Mad in America, medical journalist Robert Whitaker reveals an astounding truth: Schizophrenics in the United States fare worse than those in poor countries, and quite possibly worse than asylum patients did in the early nineteenth century. Indeed, Whitaker argues, modern treatments for the severely mentally ill are just old medicine in new bottles and we as a society are deluded about their efficacy. Tracing over three centuries of "cures" for madness, Whitaker shows how medical therapies-from "spinning" or "chilling" patients in colonial times to more modern methods of electroshock, lobotomy, and drugs-have been used to silence patients and dull their minds, deepening their suffering and impairing their hope of recovery. Based on exhaustive research culled from old patient medical records, historical accounts, and government documents, this haunting book raises important questions about our obligations to the mad, what it means to be "insane," and what we value most about the human mind. |
Contents
The Darkest Era 19001950 | 39 |
19 | 49 |
4 | 73 |
Brain Damage as Miracle Therapy | 107 |
Back to Bedlam 19501990s | 139 |
The Patients Reality | 161 |
The Story We Told Ourselves | 195 |
Shame of a Nation | 211 |
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Common terms and phrases
akathisia American Journal American psychiatry Antipsychotic Drugs antipsychotic medications Archives Association asylum asylum doctors atypicals became behavior biological Borison Brain Damage caused chlorpromazine chronic cited coma countries cure Damage as Miracle developed diagnosis discharged disorder doctors dopamine doses drug companies electroshock emotional encephalitis lethargica eugenicists Eugenics experiments fluphenazine Freeman and Watts frontal lobes function haloperidol human injected insane insulin investigators Janssen Journal of Psychiatry lobotomy Mad in America medical journals medicine ment Mental Health mental hospitals mentally ill metrazol mind Miracle Therapy Moniz moral treatment Mosher NIMH olanzapine operation outcomes pharmaceutical phrenia physicians placebo produced psychosis Psychosurgery psychotic Quakers receptors recovered relapse rates reported risk risperidone roleptics Sakel schizo schizophrenia schizophrenia patients scientific Shock Therapy side effects social society Soteria sterilization story suffered surgery symptoms tardive dyskinesia therapeutic Thorazine tients tion told treated trials Walter Freeman wrote York