Books Worth Reading

This is the title of a 2010 research report by Thomas J. Moore, Joseph Glenmullen, and Curt D. Furberg, published in PLOS One, an online peer-reviewed journal. The authors of the study searched the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System from 2004 to September 2009, and flagged reports indicating violence. They concluded: "Acts of violence towards others are a genuine and serious adverse drug event associated with a relatively small group of drugs." ...

All the awful things you’ve heard and read about the pharmaceutical companies are documented on the pages of Bad Pharma with compelling clarity and abundant references. Dr. Goldacre is a British physician. His primary issue is the safety and efficacy of pharmaceutical products in general medicine, but he has a lot to say about psychiatric drugs also. Here are some quotes: "Drugs are tested by the people who manufacture them, in poorly designed trials, on hopelessly small numbers of weird, unrepresentative patients, and analysed using techniques which are flawed by design, in such a way that they exaggerate the benefits of treatments."(p. x) ...

De-Medicalizing Misery, edited by Mark Rapley, Joanna Moncrieff, and Jacqui Dillon This book is a collection of papers by various authors, most of whom have experience working with clients and are also associated with prestigious British universities. Here are some quotes: “The architects of modern biological psychiatry have constructed a system that does little justice to the myriad problems it claims to address, while creating multiple iatrogenic problems for those to whom it is applied.” (p 1) ...

A few weeks ago I recommended Taking America Off Drugs by Stephen Ray Flora. Well, he has also written The Power of Reinforcement (State University of New York Press, 2004), and this also is well worth reading. Reinforcement is a crucial concept in psychology, and in this book Dr. Flora clarifies the matter and dispels the misinformation. Buy it; read it; keep it close.

Taking America Off Drugs by Stephen Ray Flora A few weeks ago, in a comment, A Behaviorist Fan recommended the above book to me. It came out in 2007, and I don’t know how I missed it at the time. But I’ve read it now and it’s a superb piece of work. Definitely a must buy and must keep close at hand. Stephen analyses the various “diagnoses” listed in DSM. He points out their behavioral nature, and describes how they can be ameliorated with relatively simple behavioral techniques. ...

Unhinged, by Daniel Carlat, MD Dr. Carlat is a psychiatrist who has written something of an exposé of the abuses that reside within the psychiatric profession. Many of his chapters echo topics that have been addressed frequently on this blog. Dr. Carlat still clings to the notion that problem behaviors can be accurately conceptualized as illnesses, but he does criticize the proliferation of “diagnoses” and the application of these “diagnoses” to increasing numbers of individuals. ...

I have recently read a very interesting book by Irving Kirsch, PhD. It’s called The Emperor’s New Drugs, and the central theme of the work is that antidepressants are only very slightly more effective than placebos (i.e. sugar pills), and that the difference is not clinically significant. The logic is cogent and the research is rigorous. Read the book and decide for yourself. Dr. Kirsch argues in favor of psychotherapy as a substitute for pills. And certainly talking is usually helpful. However, as long as depression is conceptualized as an illness, I don’t believe we will see real progress in this field. ...

The central theme of this blog is that mental illness is a spurious and invalid concept, which is promoted and developed by the American Psychiatric Association to legitimize the use of mood-altering drugs. It is certainly true that people display various problems in their daily lives and particularly in their interpersonal relationships. The American Psychiatric Association claims that all such problems are caused by mental illness and their list of these so-called illnesses is so long that virtually anybody can be embraced within their coils. ...