The Myth of the Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment [Paperback]

Joanna Moncrieff (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 13, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0230574327 | ISBN-13: 978-0230574328 | Edition: Revised

This controversial book overturns the claim that psychiatric drugs work by correcting chemical imbalance, and analyzes the professional, commercial and political vested interests that have shaped this view. It provides a comprehensive critique of research on drugs including antidepressants, antipsychotics and mood stabilizers.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'This book is critically important and should be essential reading for all psychiatrists, politicians, service providers, and user groups. Why? Because Joanna Moncrieff's central tenet is right, and the implications for service delivery are profound. The book is closely argued and well referenced. Even if you disagree with some of its overall premises, it is not legitimate to dismiss it. I urge you to read it if only as a prompt to a critical evaluation of the status quo, never a bad thing, and almost always an illuminating exercise.' - Sarah Yates, Cambridge, UK

'This is a sober and thoughtful book. I found it very engaging and worth the effort to be better informed about a subject that affects many of our clients and impinges on our professional lives as therapists.' - Existential Analysis (Society for Existential Analysis)

'...Joanna Moncrieff, a practising psychiatrist and academic, has produced a devastating critique of the use of psychiatric drugs...This courageous book has the potential to revolutionise psychiatric practice and the care of people with many forms of mental distress. Many in the therapy professions will, I am sure, celebrate its message.' - Rachel Freeth, Therapy Today

'This book does what it says on the cover. It is a concise, powerful, well-referenced and well-constructed critique of psychiatric drug treatment...If I had the power to, I would make it essential reading on all counselling and psychotherapy trainings.' - Pete Sanders, Healthcare Counselling and Psychotherapy Journal

About the Author

JOANNA MONCIREFF is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mental Health Sciences at University College London, UK. She is co-founder of the Critical Psychiatry Network and writes critically about the use and misuse of psychiatric drug treatments, their history, and the influences that have promoted them.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; Revised edition (October 13, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0230574327
• ISBN-13: 978-0230574328
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #49,654 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

82 of 85 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dissecting a medical myth, February 23, 2008

By 

Ben Hansen (Traverse City, Michigan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Myth of the Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment (Hardcover)

Depression was once viewed as a state of mind caused by stressful life factors, but today the majority of Americans believe depression is a biological disease caused by chemical imbalance in the brain. This shift in the way "mental disorders" like depression and anxiety are viewed has resulted in profound social and cultural changes. Antidepressants are now the most widely prescribed class of medications in the U.S., and many states have enacted parity legislation requiring insurance coverage for mental illness equal to physical illness. Soldiers returning from Iraq are encouraged to seek treatment for post-traumatic stress, and Congress may pass a "Mothers Act" to promote screening new moms for postpartum depression. In many classrooms more than half the students are on medications for attention deficit and similar disorders, and the number of U.S. children diagnosed with bipolar disorder has risen an astounding 4,000% in the past ten years. Almost weekly we hear of yet another school shooting, with headlines clamoring for early intervention and mandatory treatment of "at risk" individuals.

Against this backdrop of a seemingly rampant epidemic of mental illness, Joanna Moncrieff has written a brilliant new book calling into question nearly everything commonly believed about the nature of psychiatric illness and psychiatric medication. First and foremost, this book shatters the myth that psychiatric drugs restore chemical balance. Page by page and chapter by chapter, Dr. Moncrieff systematically exposes the shoddy science, flawed research and deceptive marketing campaigns which have led us down a sadly mistaken path that has nothing to do with science and everything to do with profit.

Among the most interesting chapters, Moncrieff methodically examines what happens to patients on different classes of psychiatric drugs. The so-called antipsychotics such as Zyprexa and Risperdal achieve their therapeutic effects by causing a form of Parkinson's disease, while the so-called SSRI antidepressants such as Prozac and Zoloft have comparatively little effect on the brain but often cause nausea and seem to work mostly as active placebos, barely outperforming inactive placebos such as simple sugar pills.

Because the author follows strict scientific methods and carefully documents every step of her work, this is not a book that will appeal to a mass audience, but for anyone seriously interested in genuine medical research unfettered by special interests dedicated to maximizing pharmaceutical profits, I cannot recommend this book too highly. Joanna Moncrieff's The Myth of the Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment belongs on the reference shelf alongside Grace E. Jackson's Rethinking Psychiatric Drugs: A Guide for Informed Consent and Peter R. Breggin's Brain Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry: Drugs, Electroshock, and the Psychopharmaceutical Complex.

45 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally! Truth sounds sweet!, December 9, 2009

By 

Christopher Rogers "banadvertising" (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Myth of the Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment (Paperback)

I've worked in Psychiatry for 15 years and kept a constant eye on the legitimacy of the foundations of the discipline. The Bio-Psychiatric models stands or falls on its premise that mental disorders are biological diseases, and, one is left with no doubt upon reading this book, that Bio-Psychiatry falls. I've waited to read this book since I heard of its imminent publication, and relished every well researched word. I can not speak highly enough of this work and the on-going work of Dr Moncrieff and others of the Critical Psychiatry Network. It leaves me with questions and a nasty sense that I am engaging in an essentially immoral discipline and causes me to wonder whether - to paraphrase Chomsky - I should stop tyranny by stopping my participation in it. My only criticism of the book is that it could quite easily have been twice as long, and I was, at certain points, wishing that the author had gone into more detail on some issues. But, that said, this is the best book I've read on the issue of Psychiatric medications and the political-economy of the whole Psychiatric apparatus. I hope it wins the MIND book of the year and forces inroads into the profession itself.

If I were a patient of the Mental Health system this book would accompany me to every appointment I had with mental health professionals and would hopefully force some very thorny issues, that rarely arise in Psychiatric consultations, to the surface to be answered.

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Single Best Book on Psychiatry and Psychopharmacology, April 14, 2010

By 

Mark P. Jenkins (Tacoma, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Myth of the Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment (Paperback)

For both my research and my own personal enlightenment I have read virtually every book published since Listening to Prozac on the use of drugs in psychiatric practice. While I love the work of David Healy and still consider him, in fact, the best resource overall on this issue, I am now convinced that Joanna Moncrieff's book is the single best one volume treatment available. What Moncreiff does beautifully is combine three things: a history of psychiatric practice, an analysis of the science supporting (or, so often, not supporting) psychiatric practice and a sustained polemic to the effect that psychiatry should abandon its disease-centered model and adopt instead a drug-centered model. As I say, Healy, too, addresses these issues in his many books and articles, and his work is absolutely priceless, but Moncreiff's ability to distill the essence of Healy's critique, while making substantial contributions of her own, into a single, extremely well-organized and easy to read volume, makes this the one book that everyone with any kind of stake in any aspect of mental health should read.