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How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation
Pantheon
February 2008
On Sale: April 24, 2008
304 pages ISBN: 0375423990 EAN: 9780375423994 Hardcover
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Self-Help Health
Public perceptions of mental health issues have changed
dramatically over the last fifteen years, and nowhere is
this more apparent than in the rampant overmedication of
ordinary Americans. In 2006, 227 million antidepressant
prescriptions were dispensed in the United States, more
than any other class of medication; in that same year, the
United States accounted for 66 percent of the global
antidepressant market. In Comfortably Numb, Charles Barber
provides a much-needed context for this disturbing
phenomenon. Barber explores the ways in which pharmaceutical companies
first create the need for a drug and then rush to fill it,
and he reveals that the increasing pressure Americans are
under to medicate themselves (direct-to-consumer
advertising, fewer nondrug therapeutic options, the promise
of the quick fix, the blurring of distinction between
mental illness and everyday problems). Most importantly, he
convincingly argues that without an industry to promote
them, non-pharmaceutical approaches that could have the
potential to help millions are tragically overlooked by a
nation that sees drugs as an instant cure for all emotional
difficulties. Here is an unprecedented account of the impact of
psychiatric medications on American culture and on
Americans themselves.
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