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Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill Paperback – May 25, 2010

by Robert Whitaker (Author)

165 customer reviews

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Schizophrenics in the United States currently fare worse than patients in the world’s poorest countries. In Mad in America, medical journalist Robert Whitaker argues that modern treatments for the severely mentally ill are just old medicine in new bottles, and that we as a society are deeply deluded about their efficacy. The widespread use of lobotomies in the 1920s and 1930s gave way in the 1950s to electroshock and a wave of new drugs. In what is perhaps Whitaker’s most damning revelation, Mad in America examines how drug companies in the 1980s and 1990s skewed their studies to prove that new antipsychotic drugs were more effective than the old, while keeping patients in the dark about dangerous side effects.

A haunting, deeply compassionate book—now revised with a new introduction—Mad in America raises important questions about our obligations to the mad, the meaning of “insanity,” and what we value most about the human mind.

Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill

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Product Details

Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Basic Books; 2 edition (May 25, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0465020143
ISBN-13: 978-0465020140
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.9 x 8.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (165 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #60,124 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #16 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Mental Health > Schizophrenia
- #25 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Psychology & Counseling > History
- #38 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Psychology & Counseling > Mental Illness

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1 star		10%

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Top Customer Reviews

Scathing Review of How the Mentally Ill are Treated

ByA customeron January 24, 2003

Format: Hardcover

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. She then goes home for a day even though she isn't supposed to, does various household chores and leaves to go jump off a bridge. The greatest thing that can be taken from this book is not only how various doctors have experimented on the mentally ill with the so-called science of eugenics as well as the notion that mentally ill people are less human but the example treatment put forth by the Quakers as well as the Sorteria project. Mentally ill people deserve better treatment in this country as well as better healthcare overall. A WAKE UP CALL. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

22 comments 105 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

If the whole country only knew.

Byavid readeron December 9, 2004

Format: Hardcover

In 1968 I and a friend decided to get out of the Army by pretending we were crazy. We ended up in a major Army psych ward on the west coast. I saw first hand how patients looked before and directly after shock treatment and heavy psych drugs. Although my psychiatrist knew I was faking it (but couldn't prove it) he casually suggested that "maybe some shock treatment might help," while watching me for any reaction. My stomach turned into a knot as I tried to suppress the terror I felt when I realized he could do just that and there was nothing I could do about it.
That relatively mild experience helps me to get a little idea of the utter horror some of the patients I saw and those in this book must have felt.
It's difficult to believe that in this country where "all men are created equal" our fellow citizens have been treated as they have simply because they made the mistake of going to a phychiatrist for help. It should read "all men minus the mentally ill or those we consider unfit are created equal."
This book should be a wake up call to all of those artists, dreamers, eccentrics, religious believers, minorities or any other groups that might be considered different. To one of these phychiatrists you just may have a delusional disorder (because you don't think like everyone else) and should be put on medication to release you from your "mental illness."
If you value your personal freedom and our way of life in this country, please read this book and tell others to read it.
The keywords "alternative mental health" brings up some useful alternatives for mental health that are not mind numbing.
Also, "niacin and schizophrenia" is good.

22 comments 83 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Quacks & Quakers

ByGary C. Marfinon July 4, 2003

Format: Hardcover

Imagine a doctor wearing the traditionally authoritative white coat walking into the local asylum with a baseball bat. He finds a couple of hyperactive patient-residents, clobbers them over the head with the bat and notices that they grow noticeably calmer when unconcious. The company that makes the bats funds the Doctor's subsequent research (which of course corroborates the earlier findings) and the bat is marketed to other psychiatrists as the "mood stabilizer." N years later the therapy of choice might be a stun-gun, a.k.a., the bio-consciousness transformer. Mad in America, as the title suggests, chronicles the history of a dysfunctional field, psychiatry, and the way it variously classified, misunderstood, mistreated and misled the most vulnerale of its patients, the schizophrenic. Psychiatry either failed to see what was happening to its patients or fabricated what it saw. Lobotomies, the so-called neuroleptics and the "atypicals" are all here on display in Whitaker's book as hyped and ineffective at best and, at worst, downright fradulent therapies. Taking a cue from Watergate's deepthroat, Whitaker almost always can explain why psychiatry went astray by "following the money."
This is a powerful book, but a problematic one as well. At least some of the drugs described by Whitaker remain in the standard PDR. Some fraction of patients may benefit from them, and benefit for reasons that psychiatry may not adequately understand. It's also valid that some fraction of patients benefit from placebos. Whitaker is surely right to put all of us on our guard, but few are willing to abandon entirely the hypothesis that bio-chemical imabalnces may be involved at some level as a causal agent in the overall manifestation of "madness." The theraputic approach of the early Quakers, with its emphasis on communities of caring, clearly desereve to be re-discovered and Whitaker does us a favor by reviewing this history, but so too we need to retain those pharmacological avenues that honestly show sound results, despite the possibilities for abuse, if only because the magnitude of the "madness" problem will invariably swamp any system that relies exclulsively on some combination of residential confinement, surgical procedures or out-patient psychotherapy.

1010 comments 103 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Most Recent Customer Reviews

Sad, but informational book

Sad, but informational book. It was a supplement book for my abnormal psychology class, and I found myself referencing it long after the class was over.Read more

Published 8 days ago by Amazon Customer

being in m. ill person and kind of touch ...

being in m.ill person and kind of touch my buttons but now healing myself w natual tech.meditation after being on med. stigma and showing phyc.

Published 2 months ago by r0dg3rw4b1t

Great read.

Great book. I have some personal experience with the behavioral health system in America and definitely agreed with some of the authors points.

Published 2 months ago by Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Great book

Published 3 months ago by Amazon Customer

Thumbs up

Great read

Published 5 months ago by Ssarah

A disturbing vieew of mental illness and its treatment in the Unitted States

I found some of the arguments in the book hard to believe. The closest I have come to mental illness was when my wife began to have some serious bouts with hallucinations and...Read more

Published 6 months ago by johnn

A MUST READ

A must read for anyone who is taking or a friend or family member is taking neurological inhibitor drugs.Read more

Published 7 months ago by Amber

Great book

A very well articulated history of psychiatry. Earned 5 stars because of the down to earth and optimistic epilogue, which gives aspiring mental health professionals hope for...Read more

Published 10 months ago by Amazon Customer

Psychiatry Revealed

Hard hitting and heartbreaking truths about how psychiatry in the United States and western world became what it is today.Read more

Published 11 months ago by NG healing

Thorough history of mental health care in US -- get the audio version for ease of reading

Amazingly informative read about the bleak history of mental health care in the US. Dense and heavy -- I bought the audio version and it was much easier to get through.Read more

Published 11 months ago by Karen Grimaud

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