I think this book was a really convincing take on the lack of a biological basis for mental illness. I've read a lot about the topic as I had a diagnosis several years ago due to what I now in hindsight can see wasn't an issue with my neurotransmitters, but a convergence of many huge life-altering events mixed with a horrible work environment.

I've always been ambivalent about books that are anti-psychiatry, as compelling as a lot of their arguments are, because medication does work for people. It worked for me, even though I strongly doubt there was any medical issue with me. But it was the kick start I needed to get me going, and therapy got me the rest of the way. Some folks need to be on medications for a long time or for the rest of their lives, and I think that throwing the baby away with the bath water would be an unfortunate overreaction to the (albeit modest) gains that some of the "biological revolution" in psychiatry have gotten us. This book is not anti-psychiatry per-se, which is definitely an approach that I appreciated. (And the author also concludes that medication does help people, which I think is an important point that needs to be stated and re-stated if we ever want to reduce the stigma of mental illness.)

I even more appreciated the fact that while the author does conclude that medications help some, she also exposes the absurdities, ironies, and cold hard capitalism surrounding many of them.

In reading this book I really thought about how arbitrary mental illness can be. If the diagnoses change, if society's interpretation of a disorder changes, if there is NO biology behind them, what are they? Yet they're here and they profoundly affect peoples lives and we can't brush aside or ignore them.

I think this book does a really great job in explaining what's at issue with the laser focus on the biological sources of mental illness. I was a little confused if the author was also pointing out the issues with Freudian / neo-Freudian analysis, or if my own bias against Freudian psychoanalysis was clouding my reading of the book. I would have preferred a little bit more focus on what is working for people. I liked the two sentences about CBT but a lot of more modern therapeutic approaches (that I found super effective personally, but would like more information about the efficacy of generally) were completely absent.

Anyway, if you're interested in mental illness, psychiatry, history, treatment, and what the heck is going on at the root of it all, then you should definitely read this book! ( )

History of how psychiatrists and other doctors kept returning to a search for physical sources of mental illness, even during the age of Freud; the brain keeps being rediscovered as the problem instead of the mind, even as particular theories of why tend to fail in various ways and have historically supported various forms of discrimination. ( )

There was a pretty brutal review of this book in the Times Literary Supplement. The upshot seems to be that while the book provides a "sound synthesis of psychiatry's recent troubles" its larger historical account of psychiatry is deeply misleading, if not inaccurate.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/private/scientific-wasteland-problems-psychia...

Interesting historical review of the treatment of mental illness with a focus on schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression. ( )