Overview

Psychiatry Under the Influence investigates the actions and practices of the American Psychiatric Association and academic psychiatry in the United States, and presents it as a case study of institutional corruption.

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9781137506924

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Reviews

This timely book is a careful thoughtful analysis of malign institutional and political influences on the way psychiatry works today, and it provides a rare combination of scholarly exploration of a problem with quite justifiable anger at the consequences for all of us. It is the diagnosis of a deep problem with psychiatry, of the pernicious activities of those who seek to profit from our distress, and prognosis linked with arguments for a world in which there is, instead, accountability and transparency. Whitaker and Cosgrove's passionate critique gives us the resources to argue back against the pharmaceutical industry and to mobilize voices for an authentically liberating response to questions of mental health. Ian Parker, Professor of Management, University of Leicester, UK Psychiatry Under the Influence is a thoughtful and well-researched expose of the current framing of mental health and illness, using the lens of institutional corruption to examine the dual influence of psychiatry's financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry and professional protectionism. This is a profoundly humanistic critique of how the scientific evidence supporting newer psychiatric drug treatments could be so poor, yet have 'street cred'. This a 'must read' on the medicalization of modern life. - Barbara Mintzes, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Sydney, Australia

This is an extraordinary piece of work that should be read by every mental health professional, minimally. The book might also serve well as a supplemental advanced undergraduate or graduate textbook in a psychopathology or even a research methods class. Where research methods courses separate good from bad science, Whitaker and Cosgrove have now provided us with numerous examples of bad science to which we can now add, corrupt science. (Fred Ernst, Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, Vol. 46, 2016)

Author Information

Robert Whitaker is the author of four books, two of which—Mad in America and Anatomy of an Epidemic - tell of the history of psychiatric treatments. Anatomy of an Epidemic won the Investigative Reporters and Editors book award for best investigative journalism in 2010. He is a former Fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University, USA.   Lisa Cosgrove is Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA and a Fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University, USA.  She is also a clinical psychologist. She has co-edited and co-authored casebooks on the ethical and medico-legal issues that arise in organized psychiatry because of financial conflicts of interest. She received the 2014 Distinguished Publication Award from the Association for Women in Psychology for her paper ""Industry's Colonization of Psychiatry.""

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