The book the NYTimes "Ask the Expert" Child Psychiatry Q&A Koplewicz didn't read: C-Span, Robert Whitaker Anatomy of an Epidemic

Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America--Robert Whitaker

Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, by Robert Whitaker:

BOOK TV on C-Span 2

About the Program

The 1998 Pulitzer Prize Finalist and author of "Mad in America" discusses the rise in diagnosis of mental illness in the U.S. and the proliferation of drugs to medicate various conditions. Mr. Whitaker contends that drugs do little to balance imbalanced brain chemistry. The event is at the National Arts Club in New York.


About the Author

Robert Whitaker

Robert Whitaker has written for the Boston Globe as well as numerous articles on medicine, the drug industry and the mentally ill. He is also author of "Mad in America."
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Related links, further reading and reviews of the book by Robert Whitaker, "Anatomy of an Epidemic", released April 2010

Anatomy of an Epidemic:(author website)

"Anatomy of an Epidemic investigates a medical mystery: Why has the number of adults and children disabled by mental illness skyrocketed over the past fifty years? There are now more than four million people in the United States who receive a government disability check because of a mental illness, and the number continues to soar. Every day, 850 adults and 250 children with a mental illness are added to the government disability rolls. What is going on?"

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Salon

"Anatomy of an Epidemic": The hidden damage of psychiatric drugs

An award-winning science reporter looks at the history of mental illness in America -- with disturbing results -Salon review

"An acclaimed mental health journalist and winner of a George Polk Award for his reporting on the psychiatric field, Whitaker draws on 50 years of literature and in-person interviews with patients to answer a simple question: If "wonder drugs" like Prozac are really helping people, why has the number of Americans on government disability due to mental illness skyrocketed from 1.25 million in 1987 to over 4 million today?"

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TIME magazine

Book review:Anatomy of an Epidemic:

" With Americans popping psychiatric drugs like so many pieces of candy, you'd think mental illness would have decreased since the first antipsychotic medication was approved in 1954. Not so. In 1987, the year Prozac was approved, 1 in 184 Americans was receiving disability payments for a mental illness. Two decades later, the rate had more than doubled, to 1 in 76. Why? Anatomy of an Epidemic offers some answers, charting controversial ground with mystery-novel pacing."
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Huffington Post

'Anatomy Of An Epidemic': Could Psychiatric Drugs Be Fuelling A Mental Illness Epidemic?: (by Robert Whitaker)

"This epidemic has now struck our nation's children, too. The number of children who receive a federal payment because of a severe mental illness rose from 16,200 in 1987 to 561,569 in 2007, a 35-fold increase.

I wrote Anatomy of an Epidemic to investigate this epidemic, and this pursuit necessarily raises a very uncomfortable question. Although we, as a society, believe that psychiatric medications have "revolutionized" the treatment of mental illness, the disability numbers suggest a very different possibility.

Could our drug-based paradigm of care, for some unforeseen reason, be fueling this epidemic?"