(6 reviews) Author: David Healy ISBN : 9780801888229 New from $26.06 Format: PDFReview
"If David Healy's intent is to present a cohesive, thorough, integrated and provocative account of the history of the concept of mania and the evolution of what is currently called bipolar disorder, he is tremendously successful." -- PsycCRITIQUES
"David Healy reminds us that we need to ask ourselves what it means to be ill and what it means to be well." -- Garan Holcombe, California Literary Review
"A learned and polemical volume in the series Biographies of Disease published by the Johns Hopkins University Press." -- Algis Valiunas, New Atlantis
"A powerful political tract. As social history it provides the most detailed available account of the interactions of psychiatry and the world of pharmaceutical manufacturing." -- Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
"Provides a probing and challenging commentary on the state of contemporary psychiatry." -- Allan Beveridge, British Journal of Psychiatry
"A distinct and powerful view of the history of psychiatry that arouses controversy in the best sense of the word. Healy's discussion of the role of drug companies is especially right on the mark." -- Gerald N. Grob, Ph.D., Henry E. Sigerist Professor of the History of Medicine Emeritus at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
"David Healy is indeed an enfant terrible -- and a very brave man. I doubt he is on Eli Lilly's or Pfizer's Christmas card list." -- Times Literary Supplement
"Mania is a work that deserves a wide readership." -- Gerald N. Grob, Ph.D., Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
"Well-written and compelling... I encourage you to read this exceptional book." -- Tom Olson, PhD, Nursing History Review
"The book is a scholarly one [and] Healy's wide knowledge of the facts of the history is impressive." -- Paul Skerritt, Health and History
"[David Healy's] work has enriched our historiographic discourse enormously and social historians of medicine can only greet that as good news." -- Eric J. Engstrom, Social History of Medicine
From the Back Cover
In this provocative history, David Healy explores how perceptions of illness, if not illnesses themselves, are mutable over time. Drawing heavily on primary sources and supplemented with interviews and insight gained over Healy’s long career, this lucid and engaging narrative of bipolar disorder sheds new light on one of humankind’s most vexing ailments.
"David Healy is indeed an enfant terrible—and a very brave man. I doubt he is on Eli Lilly’s or Pfizer’s Christmas card list."— Times Literary Supplement
"How did we come to apply such a serious diagnosis to vaguely depressed or irritable adults, to unruly children, and to nursing home residents? Is it simply that psychiatric science has progressed and now allows us to detect more easily an illness that had previously been ignored or misunderstood? Healy has another, more cynical explanation: the never-ending expansion of the category of bipolar disorder benefits large pharmaceutical companies eager to sell medications marketed with the disorder in mind." —London Review of Books
"A powerful political tract. As social history it provides the most detailed available account of the interactions of psychiatry and the world of pharmaceutical manufacturing."— Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
"If David Healy's intent is to present a cohesive, thorough, integrated, and provocative account of the history of the concept of mania and the evolution of what is currently called bipolar disorder, he is tremendously successful." —PsycCRITIQUES
- Series: Johns Hopkins Biographies of Disease
- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press; 1 edition (May 22, 2008)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0801888220
- ISBN-13: 978-0801888229
- Product Dimensions: 1 x 5.9 x 8.7 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Mania: A Short History of Bipolar Disorder PDF
David Healy is a professor of psychiatry at Cardiff University; in clear, jargon free prose he writes the history of mental illness, how our concepts and treatments of mental disorders have changed. He believes that history is part of the scientific process because by examining our beliefs and how they have changed we challenge them; he ridicules those like Fukuyama who believe that history has come to an end since the underlying notion of the end of history as well as the public relations departments of the pharmaceutical companies is that our practices are perfect and need never change. As evidence of the contrary, Healy notes, among many examples, such contemporary barbarism as the "treatment" of a 4 year old and a 2 year old with psychotropic drugs that resulted in their deaths.
Transnational corporations did not enter the mental illness market until after WWII. Among other things, WWII brought a paradigm shift in how disease was treated. Drugs such as antibiotics became the focus of all treatments, including mental illness. Chemical companies saw huge profits in drugs and spun off new drug companies which have become the most profitable corporate entities worldwide. As part of this history, much of the early focus on creating new drugs was the exploration of chemical dyes used in the chemical industry and to this day there are many drugs which resulted from that research. In order to maintain their profits, the drug companies aka "Big Pharm" have turned the science of mental health into junk. This is a partial list of how the pharmaceutical companies market their products:
1. They create associations for mental health care professionals and fund their publications;
2.
No comments:
Post a Comment