Anatomy Of An Epidemic (Paperback)

In an era of modern psychiatry and so-called wonder drugs for depression, why has the number of mentally ill people increased sixfold over the past fifty years? Could it be that the drug-based paradigm of care is in fact fueling this plague? Robert Whitaker, the acclaimed science and history writer, returns to the field he knows best, tearing through the conventional wisdom regarding the history of psychiatry and uncovering a dark narrative of medical deception. As Whitaker points out, the number of disabled mentally ill in the United States has skyrocketed in recent decades while the psychopharmacology revolution has been unfolding. Anatomy of an Epidemic explores these unsettling developments in the manner of a narrative mystery, piecing together fifty years of science and drug history to reveal how the false story we've been told about mental disorders has created an epidemic in mental illness.