31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
If you work with schizophrenia then read this book, March 21, 2005
I work with people diagnosed schizophrenic and intensely dislike the hopelessness engendered by this label and by the medical model treatment of these individuals. I also feel frustrated at the way medication is accepted as the key intervention for this condition despite its poor record at bringing about recovery.
Expect to feel very uncomfortable as you read the extensive research that deconstructs what you have been taught (and come to accept as true) about the biological basis for schizophrenia and its reliance on the use of medication.
The book also offers thoroughly researched alternative theoretical frameworks and treatments that have been shown to be effective in bringing relief to those experiencing psychosis.
I highly recommend this book for those prepared to consider more than just the medical model framework and those who want more treatment options than can be provided by medication alone.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A psychology text that actually works!, November 3, 2006
John Read's Models of Madness is the only psychology textbook I have ever read that pulls no punches when it comes to the mental health industry's misuse and abuse of its power. It provides, not a balanced viewpoint, but a "balancing viewpoint." Indeed it must, so as to counter the enormous colossus of wealth and influence which has become our mental health industry. It is a scholarly work, with an abundance of data to both describe the shortfalls and pitfalls of the mental health industry, as well as the techniques that have actually been proven to benefit mental-health consumers. There are actually ways to increase the happiness, comfort, quality of life and self-respect of clientele who have been pegged "incurable."
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19 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Powerful Critique of the Medical Model, February 17, 2007
Over the past few decades, the psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries have almost completely silenced alternate viewpoints to the biological model of mental disorder. So this critique of the dominant paradigm comes as a breath of fresh air. The 23 scholar-contributors forcefully argue that "schizophrenia" is a scientifically meaningless and socially devastating label. Not only is there no unitary construct of "schizophrenia," these scholars argue, but complex social and environmental factors underlie both the patterns of diagnosis and the expressed symptoms. The authors painstakingly elucidate the roles of poverty, gender, racism, and - most importantly - childhood trauma in adult psychosis. They bring back the now-taboo role of family dynamics, including "expressed emotion" (a euphemism for hostile, critical and overinvolved parenting), communication deviance, and dysfunctional relationships between parents.
Starting with a history of the concept of schizophrenia and its use to incarcerate the poor, the authors move on to an exhaustive, well-researched, and easy-to-understand summary of decades of research findings debunking the biogenetic model. Regarding the role of trauma in the etiology of "schizophrenia," did you know that two-thirds of Israeli mental patients are Holocaust survivors, who have been beaten, strapped to beds, heavily drugged and often kept in solitary confinement for decades? That the structural and functional differences between the brains of "schizophrenics" and "normal" adults are the same differences as those between people who were traumatized versus not traumatized in childhood (e.g., overactive hypothalamic-adrenal-pituitary axis, cerebral atrophy, ventricular enlargements, reversed cerebral asymmetry, and neurotransmitter abnormalities)? Perhaps, some studies suggest, many of the "voices" of schizophrenia patients are thinly disguised expressions of past trauma, projected into the external, present world as a less-than-functional defense.
In the current market-driven paradigm, patients are said to have "insight" if they go along with the biological psychiatrist's viewpoint, which thoroughly discounts their experiences. Far from blaming people, an understanding of the non-biological causes of psychosis can engender hope and - as outlined in the final section of the book - lead to effective treatments.
I could go on, but the book touches so many subjects - psychotropic medications, electroconvulsive therapy, heredity, drug companies, therapies, and much more - that you just need to buy it and read it yourself.
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