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

"Mad in America" is heart breaking. The expose examines the paradox: "Schizophrenic outcomes in the United States and other developed countries today are much worse than in the poor countries of the world." Journalist Robert Whitaker, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, showcases the first hospital for the insane. In 1751 the Quakers began a moral treatment that included exercise, social activities and work. These methods had remarkable cure rates (unreachable with today's care). However, one can easily see there is no money to be made via the aforementioned interventions. Therefore, by mid-1800s, the medical field, fearful of losing power, began to become interested in using medical knowledge to treat the insane. Whitaker elucidates the shift of power from humane treatment to "enlightened" medical treatments such as insulin coma therapy, ECT, lobotomies and the present use of mind-numbing neuroleptics (originally used on prisoners to quiet them down) and other drug therapies that prove to be quite dangerous due to their serious side-effects. In short, the suffering of the mentally ill have been compounded as the current sadistic milieu uses them as a cash cow. Whitaker's writing paints the horror all too well. One begins to wonder if the guilty psychiatrists, researchers and pharmaceutical companies ever look in the mirror. The evidence of their criminal relationship is laid out clearly by Whitaker. "Mad in America" is a testament that cries out for massive changes within the corrupted pharmaceutical field of treating the mentally-ill. Bohdan Kot

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.

Robert Whitaker has written a readable, well-documented, and disturbing book about the arrogant and sometimes monstrous behavior of American psychiatrists towards those they label as schizophrenic. He reveals that psychiatrists, desperate to show the biological basis of mental illness and thus establish their profession as a truly medical one, have since 1750 to the present distorted and covered up research, ignored risks, and abused helpless patients.Whitaker spends the first half of the book relating the earlier history of dehumanizing psychiatric treatments in gruesome detail. He starts with the 18th and 19th centuries, when patients were nearly drowned, spun in chairs to the point of collapse, or had their teeth or intestines removed. He continues through the first half of the 20th century, when the American eugenics movement motivated the sterilization of tens of thousands and inspired Hitler, neurologist Walter Freeman drove around the country with ice picks giving lobotomies through eye sockets, and shock therapies caused convulsions so severe that teeth, jaws, and even spines were often fractured.While the history of psychiatry, at least until 1950, is known to some, telling it lays the groundwork for Whitaker's thesis: that nothing has changed except the technology. The science it still bad, the treatment still abusive, the lying to the public and patients still egregious. Based in part on his own research, Whitaker documents the dark facts behind the past 50 years of treating patients with what are supposed to be antipsychotic medications- known in the profession as neuroleptics-from Thorazine to Clozaril and beyond.He makes the case that these drugs are often no more than chemical lobotomies. He debunks the myth that neuroleptics normalize brain chemistry, because no chemical imbalance is known to cause schizophrenia; instead they damage brain chemistry. While he acknowledges that some patients find them relieving, they cause many to feel like zombies or worse-these drugs were used by the Soviet Union to torture dissidents. They can exacerbate symptoms, make relapses more likely and more severe, and can trigger violence. They can cause a chronic psychiatric condition when recovery is otherwise possible, disabling and sometimes permanent neurological side effects, and death. In order to test pet theories, psychiatrists have experimented on unsuspecting and deliberately misled patients by making their psychoses much worse. Drug companies have conspired with doctors to cover up risks and incompetent research. The World Health Organization has shown that you stand a far better chance of recovering from schizophrenia in a developing country like Nigeria or India, where neuroleptics are rarely given, than in America or Europe.This book is a painful reminder that psychiatrists don't have a special handle on psychological problems, and their hubris can come at great cost to others.

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

This book is a must-read for anyone who cares about a person struggling with schizophrenia. As a former president of a county chapter of NAMI, I want to plainly state that Whitaker's charges of collusion between drug companies and institutions and organizations purporting to care for the mentally ill are not far-fetched. Some of his arguments are painted with a very broad brush, but that doesn't make them invalid.The statistics involving mental illness in third-world countries simply can't be ignored. This book has altered my thinking regarding anti-psychotics. Family members who dismiss this book may be acting out of fear and unwillingness to change.This book isn't the holy grail. But it provides startling information, and shouldn't be missed.