Overview

Challenging an exclusively medical approach to mental health and illness, this book considers the impact psychiatric drugs can have on spirituality. In the last thirty years, a dramatic rise in medication as a treatment for mental illness has occurred in tandem with increasing numbers of people entering treatment with a spiritually-oriented understanding of their suffering. The unforeseen result is that some people taking psychiatric drugs are engaging with them in ways that can have a profound impact on the course and outcome of treatment. Based on interviews with people on psychiatric medication who regard spirituality as significant in their lives, this book reveals how medication can be perceived as both helpful and harmful to spirituality. The author argues that spirituality must be considered in debates around psychopharmacology.

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9781785921261

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Reviews

Societal debate about psychiatric drugs usually focuses on whether the drugs are effective or do more good than harm . In this well-written, thoughtful book, Lynne Vanderpot explores the effects of psychiatric medications through a different lens: how do the medications affect one's subjective experience of being alive, and more particularly, one's internal experience of a spiritual life? Hers is a thoughtful, clear exploration of an important subject, and on every page her respect for the users of these medications and the diversity of their experiences shines through. -- Robert Whitaker, journalist and author of 'Anatomy of an Epidemic' Drawing on twenty compelling personal stories, Vanderpot attends to a fundamental, yet neglected problem - how and why psychiatric medications either enhance or inhibit healing spiritual responses to profound emotional suffering. The data highlight the troubling myopia of exclusively biological explanations and treatments of mental illness. Here you will learn just how a range of life contingencies differently shape our perceptions and experiences of pain, pills and personhood. Many readers, grabbed by its numerous striking insights, will themselves be transformed by this innovative volume. -- David A. Karp, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Boston College and author of 'Is It Me or My Meds? Living with Antidepressants' Unlike doctors, people who take psychiatric medication measure the success of their treatment not just on clinical outcomes, but on how the drugs affect the totality of their lives. That includes spirituality-the search for meaning and purpose, as well as the feeling of connectedness to self, others, and the divine. Vanderpot's book is sensitively written and uniquely focused, a valuable addition to the conversation about the use of medication in the real world. -- Katherine Sharpe, author of Coming of Age on Zoloft (Harper Perennial, 2012)

Societal debate about psychiatric drugs usually focuses on whether the drugs are effective or do more good than harm . In this well-written, thoughtful book, Lynne Vanderpot explores the effects of psychiatric medications through a different lens: how do the medications affect one's subjective experience of being alive, and more particularly, one's internal experience of a spiritual life? Hers is a thoughtful, clear exploration of an important subject, and on every page her respect for the users of these medications and the diversity of their experiences shines through. -- Robert Whitaker, journalist and author of 'Anatomy of an Epidemic'

Author Information

Lynne Vanderpot is a Mental Health Counsellor working in a Community Mental Health Center in Great Barrington, MA.

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