Mad In America

Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, And The Enduring Mistreatment Of The Mentally Ill Hardcover – December 24, 2001

Author: Visit Amazon's Robert Whitaker Page | Language: English | ISBN: 0738203858 | Format: PDF, EPUB

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Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, And The Enduring Mistreatment Of The Mentally Ill – December 24, 2001
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Amazon.com Review

Hot on the heels of an optimistic film about Nobelist John Nash's schizophrenic journey comes medical journalist Robert Whitaker's disturbing exposé of the cruel and corrupt business of treating mental illness in America. Mad in America begins by surveying three centuries of mental health treatments to discover why positive outcomes for schizophrenics in the U.S. for the last 25 years have decreased--making them lower than those in developing countries. Whitaker asks, "Why should living in a country with such rich resources and advanced medical treatments for disorders of every kind, be so toxic to those who are severely mentally ill?"

One of Whitaker's answers draws upon the historic and current assumptions of a physical cause for schizophrenia. This resulted in cruel and unusual physical treatments--from ice-water immersion and bloodletting to the more contemporary electroshock, lobotomy, and drug therapies with dangerous side effects. This physical cause model leads to Whitaker's more provocative explanation: that mental illness has become a profit center. He offers disturbing details about how good business for drug companies makes for bad medicine in treating schizophrenia. From drug companies skewing their studies and patient/subjects kept in the dark about experiments to the cozy relationship between the American Psychiatric Association and drug companies, Whitaker underlines the mistreatment of the mentally ill. This courageous and compelling book succeeds as both a history of our attitudes toward mental illness and a manifesto for changing them. --Barbara Mackoff

From Publishers Weekly

Tooth removal. Bloodletting. Spinning. Ice-water baths. Electroshock therapy. These are only a few of the horrifying treatments for mental illness readers encounter in this accessible history of Western attitudes toward insanity. Whitaker, a medical writer and Pulitzer Prize finalist, argues that mental asylums in the U.S. have been run largely as "places of confinement facilities that served to segregate the misfits from society rather than as hospitals that provided medical care." His evidence is at times frightening, especially when he compares U.S. physicians' treatments of the mentally ill to medical experiments and sterilizations in Nazi Germany. Eugenicist attitudes, Whitaker argues, profoundly shaped American medicine in the first half of the 20th century, resulting in forced sterilization and other cruel treatments. Between 1907 and 1927, roughly 8,000 eugenic sterilizations were performed, while 10,000 mentally ill Americans were lobotomized in the years 1950 and 1951 alone. As late as 1933, there were no states in which insane people could legally get married. Though it covers some of the same territory as Sander Gilman's Seeing the Insane and Elaine Showalter's The Female Malady, Whitaker's richer, more detailed book will appeal to those interested in medical history, as well as anyone fascinated by Western culture's obsessive need to define and subdue the mentally ill. Agent, Kevin Lang.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Download latest books on mediafire and other links compilation Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, And The Enduring Mistreatment Of The Mentally Ill Hardcover – December 24, 2001

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (December 24, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0738203858
• ISBN-13: 978-0738203850
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #786,361 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

I normally never write review but feel as though this book is worthy of one. What the author does in this book is what journalists fail to do. He investigates the people in charge of taking care of the mentally ill in a way that makes the reader wonder who is the one that is really ill.
He starts out with a brief history of how mentally ill people have been treated throughout history. From hydrotherapy to metrazol, insulin coma, draining of blood, "tranquilizer chairs", etc. This progresses to the more recent introduction of neuroleptics in the 1950's and how they induce a sort of parkinsonism. What's most revealing about these drugs is how he points out that people who never take them are more likely to recover. In this part of the book, he also talks about Freeman's disgusting labotomy procedures in which he pokes the patient about the eye and places a stick in their head and wiggles it to destroy the frontal lobes. Patients then go on to act like children and even continue eating after vomiting in their own food.
With all that said, the most revealing aspect is the fact that people in less developed countries fare a lot better with schizophrenia than people in more developed countries. The introduction of atypical neuroleptics also reveal how "dirty" these drugs really are in that they target so many different neurotransmitters. He goes on to point so many conflicts of interest in regards to the reviews of drugs that it left me shocked.
The saddest part of the book is the story of various individuals. A young woman was taken off venlafaxine and given amphetamines to induce her psychosis to the point where they could experiment on her using brain scans.

Whitaker and many of the reviewers here have a lot to say about schizophrenics and their medical treatment. Since I actually have schizoaffective disorder (a combination of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder) myself, I'd like to say a few words.

This subject is somewhat interesting to a lot of people in theory, but it's my life. I became ill in my early 20s and was beset by mania, depression, and psychosis. The mania and depression were a walk in the park on a sunny day compared to the psychosis. I heard loud, terrifying voices which threatened to kill me and worse. The voices sounded absolutely real and were impossible to ignore. I was completely disabled by them.

I was a smart young woman with a good education, but I could barely leave my house, let alone work. I could not even have a meaningful conversation with my friends or family because the voices were too loud. My parents became my caretakers and my friends disappeared completely.

This went on for years as I tried different antipsychotics. They worked to a degree but the voices did not go away. They certainly did not get better on their own--despite my family's love, kindness and support. Their are no words to describe how hellish and worthless my life felt.

Geodon, the antipsychotic I had settled on, began to give me symptoms of dyskinesia and my doctor insisted that I stop taking it right away and start taking a new drug: Seroquel.

Within weeks of starting the Seroquel, the voices dropped off and all but disappeared. They are very few and far between now and they no longer sound real. It took me a while to get used to living without my constant fear of the voices. I adjusted slowly and with cautious optimism--what if this didn't last?

It lasted.

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