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Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, And The Enduring Mistreatment Of The Mentally Ill Hardcover – January 1, 2002
| Robert Whitaker (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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There is a newer edition of this item:
- Print length304 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBasic Books
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 2002
- Dimensions6.25 x 1 x 9 inches
- ISBN-100738203858
- ISBN-13978-0738203850
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
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
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From The New England Journal of Medicine
Copyright © 2002 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS.
From Booklist
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"An absorbing, sometimes harrowing history of the medical treatment in the US..." -- Kirkus
"Passionate, compellingly researched polemic, as fascinating as it is ultimately horrifying." -- Mother Jones
"People should read this excellent book and learn which questions to ask before filling that "miracle" prescription." -- South Florida Sun-Sentinel
"The book's lessons about the medical dangers of greed, ego and sham are universal and couldn't be more timely." -- The Baltimore Sun
"The most important bit of mental health muckraking since Deutsch's The Shame of the States was published in 1948." -- In These Times, 6/7/02
"Whitaker does not employ the exaggerated prose of the antipsychiatry movement...Serious and well-documented." -- American Scientist November / December, 2002
"[Mad in America] is mandatory reading and raises valid issues." -- Philadelphia Inquirer, 2/24/02
"[Whitaker] does an intelligent and bold job." -- Seattle Times, 2/01/02
About the Author
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Product details
- Publisher : Basic Books; 1St Edition (January 1, 2002)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 304 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0738203858
- ISBN-13 : 978-0738203850
- Item Weight : 1.35 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.25 x 1 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #917,944 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #300 in Popular Psychology Mental Illness Books
- #415 in Schizophrenia (Books)
- #457 in Medical Psychology History
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Robert Whitaker is the author of four books: Mad in America, The Mapmaker's Wife, On the Laps of Gods and Anatomy of an Epidemic. His newspaper and magazine articles on the mentally ill and the pharmaceutical industry have garnered several national awards, including a George Polk Award for medical writing and a National Association of Science Writers Award for best magazine article. A series he cowrote for the Boston Globe on the abuse of mental patients in research settings was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1998.
Customer reviews
Top reviews from the United States
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Personally, the medication side effects I experienced on my first atypical (newer) antipsychotic were severe and consistent with the author’s desciption. There was no day that went by when I wasn’t acutely suffering.
However, my first medication did keep me out of the hospital, and allowed me to live in community rather than being perpetually restrained in an institution. Even with the horrific side effects, my first medication gave me a better life.
This book is so concerned with medication side effects that the author forgets to acknowledge these medications can improve a patient’s qualify of life. He also does not make a comprehensive distinction between the older antipsychotics which are neurotoxic and difficult to tolerate versus newer medications that have fewer side effects.
The author does not acknowledge that patients find medications that work well for them all the time. Eleven years ago, I found the medication that works for me, and I have lived a wonderful life with few side effects all these years, in full remission from schizophrenia.
Yes, I have experienced what this author describes. Antipsychotics may come with a high price to pay, but even then, they may drastically improve a patient’s quality of life. These medications may allow individuals who are a danger to themselves or others and used to always be institutionalized to recover, leave the hospital and live in the community.
Whitaker painstakingly takes us through the dreadful history of treating mental illness, focusing specifically on the late 19th century onward. From ice baths to isolation to the popularity of lobotomy from the 1920’s through the 50’s (doctors traveling across the country with an ice pick as their instrument; through the corner of the eye and removing a bit of the brain right in your home)—however, Whitaker does not explore how lobotomy was used mainly on women to control their emotions. There is an obviously sexist subtext to mental health treatment from the 50’s up to the 70’s: to control willful women.
Then Whitaker explores the creation and advances of psychopharmacology. And yes, early medication of schizophrenics and the mentally ill was disgusting and immoral. It led to sterilization and medicinal lobotomies. And pharmaceutical companies did hide harmful side-effects in order to get their drugs approved by the FDA.
But it’s nothing *new.* As we see in reports today, major pharmaceutical companies falsify or mask negative effects of their medication. In 2019, this still happens. Whitaker wants to lay the blame on psychiatry and the treatment of mental illness through medication. The problem isn’t psychiatry, the problem is Capitalism and for-profit health care.
To be honest, if I wasn’t treated by my psychiatric medication, I’d either be dead or an unproductive member of society. My medications allow me to exist in this culture.
So the case Whitaker makes is a good one, but it ignores the complexity and improvement modern mental health care deals with.
Just like modern medicine had to deal with bloodletting and leeches and mysticism, so, too, does psychiatry have to answer for its demons. But that does not mean psychiatry is bad science. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t help people. It’s evolving and will continue to evolve.
Just look at what has happened in all medical science in the 17 years since this book was published.
Top reviews from other countries
It makes you question the impact of the drug companies on people's lives and the destruction they have left in their wake.
Every person who feels the need for medication, to help them through a depressive/anxiety episode, should read this book, before visiting a GP.





