Doctoring the Mind - Hardcover

Bentall, Richard P

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 071399889X ISBN 13: 9780713998894

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2009

Synopsis

Towards the end of the twentieth century, the solution to mental illness seemed to be found. It lay in biological solutions, focusing on mental illness as a problem of the brain, to be managed or improved through drugs. We entered the 'Prozac Age' and believed we had moved on definitively from the time of frontal lobotomies to an age of good and successful mental healthcare. Biological psychiatry had triumphed.

Except maybe it hadn't. Starting with surprising evidence from the World Health Organisation that suggests people recover better from mental illness in a developing country than in the first world, Doctoring the Mind asks the question: how good are our mental health services, really? Richard Bentall picks apart the science that underlies current psychiatric practice across the US and UK. Arguing passionately for a future of mental health treatment that focuses as much on patients as individuals as on the brain itself, this is a book set to redefine our understanding of the treatment of madness in the twenty-first century.

About this title

Review:

'Wonderful. I think it should have huge appeal to anyone who has observed the process by which half-truths, partial evidence and statistical artefacts are manipulated into popular acceptance. Everyone personally or professionally concerned with mental health should read this book and weigh its conclusions. I dearly wish it could be put into the hands of the politicians and their advisors who make decisions about the life and rights of others. Its sober approach lends it real authority, and its accessibility makes it a clear guide through the fog of myth and misperception surrounding the subject.' -- Hilary Mantel

`At a time when dialogue in the presence of other human beings is becoming less and less available, this brave book gives a sense of why this could be disastrous.' -- Salley Vickers, Observer

About the Author:

Richard Bentall has held chairs in clinical psychology at the universities of Liverpool and Manchester, and is currently Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Bangor in Wales. Known internationally for his research into the causes and treatment of severe mental illness, his previous book, Madness Explained: Psychosis and Human Nature won the British Psychological Society Book Award for 2004.

About this edition

• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 071399889X
• ISBN 13: 9780713998894
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304