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Psychiatry And the Human Condition

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Bruce Charlton MD is Reader in Evolutionary Psychiatry, at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He graduated with honours in medicine and his doctoral thesis was on the neuroendocrinology of depression. Bruce Charlton has held university lectureships in Physiology, Anatomy, Epidemiology and Public Health, and has published more than a hundred academic papers in these and other subjects.

Psychiatry and the Human Condition provides an optimistic vision of a superior alternative approach to psychiatric illness and its treatment, drawing upon modern neuroscience and evolutionary theory.

Psychiatric signs and symptoms - such as anxiety, insomnia, malaise, fatigue - are part of life for most people, for much of the time. This is the human condition. Psychiatry has the potential to help. In particular, psychotropic drugs could enable more people to lead lives that are creative and fulfilled. But current classifications and treatments derive from a century-old framework which now requires replacement. Available psychotropic drugs are used crudely, and without sufficient attention to their psychological effects.

We can do better. This book argues that obsolete categories of diseases and drugs should be scrapped. The new framework of understanding implies that clinical management should focus on the treatment of biologically-valid symptoms and signs, and include a much larger role for self-treatment.

Psychiatric symptoms are part of the human condition, and all humans will find something of interest in this book.

COMMENTS:
'Psychiatry and the Human Condition offers a startling reinterpretation of the major psychiatric disorders. The bold ideas in this book are grounded in a thoughtful integration of general biology and neuroscience, and a deep understanding of mental illness. But this is no mere demolishing job on traditional psychiatry. The courageous rejection of orthodox views is followed by intriguingly constructive and testable alternatives. This is a must read.' Antonio R Damasio, MD, Professor of Neurology, University of Iowa; author of The Feeling of What Happens and Descartes' Error

'Enthralling. There are few people with the breadth of knowledge and vision to produce this work. It calls for critical reappraisal of how we approach psychiatric illness and then provides that reappraisal with verve, scholarship and panache'. Simon Wessely, Professor of Epidemiology and Liaison Psychiatry, The Institute of Psychiatry and King's College School of Medicine, London

''Bruce Charlton is one of the most imaginative and thought-provoking commentators on the relationship between ourselves and our world. This stimulating book challenges our conceptions about psychiatry and psychology. It is also fun to read!'' David Horrobin, Director of Laxdale Research, founder of Scotia Pharmaceuticals

'In recent years there has been a vacuum at the heart of psychiatry. There has been no theory to explain the nature of the conditions we are treating, why our therapies have the effect they do, and no theory to predict where the new therapies might come from. This new book uniquely fills the void. It comes as a considerable surprise to find that someone can unite the fragments of psychiatry into a coherent whole.' David Healy, Director of North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine.