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The Emperor's New Drugs

Author : Irving Kirsch

Publisher : Basic Books

Page : 242 pages

File Size : 33,97 MB

Release : 2010-01-26

Category : Psychology

ISBN : 0465021042

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Book Description

Do antidepressants work? Of course -- everyone knows it. Like his colleagues, Irving Kirsch, a researcher and clinical psychologist, for years referred patients to psychiatrists to have their depression treated with drugs before deciding to investigate for himself just how effective the drugs actually were. Over the course of the past fifteen years, however, Kirsch's research -- a thorough analysis of decades of Food and Drug Administration data -- has demonstrated that what everyone knew about antidepressants was wrong. Instead of treating depression with drugs, we've been treating it with suggestion. The Emperor's New Drugs makes an overwhelming case that what had seemed a cornerstone of psychiatric treatment is little more than a faulty consensus. But Kirsch does more than just criticize: he offers a path society can follow so that we stop popping pills and start proper treatment for depression.



The Emperor's New Drugs

Author : Irving Kirsch

Publisher : Random House

Page : 244 pages

File Size : 19,62 MB

Release : 2009-10-13

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 1409086356

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Book Description

Everyone knows that antidepressant drugs are miracles of modern medicine. Professor Irving Kirsch knew this as well as anyone. But, as he discovered during his research, there is a problem with what everyone knows about antidepressant drugs. It isn't true. How did antidepressant drugs gain their reputation as a magic bullet for depression? And why has it taken so long for the story to become public? Answering these questions takes us to the point where the lines between clinical research and marketing disappear altogether. Using the Freedom of Information Act, Kirsch accessed clinical trials that were withheld, by drug companies, from the public and from the doctors who prescribe antidepressants. What he found, and what he documents here, promises to bring revolutionary change to the way our society perceives, and consumes, antidepressants. The Emperor's New Drugs exposes what we have failed to see before: depression is not caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain; antidepressants are significantly more dangerous than other forms of treatment and are only marginally more effective than placebos; and, there are other ways to combat depression, treatments that don't only include the empty promise of the antidepressant prescription. This is not a book about alternative medicine and its outlandish claims. This is a book about fantasy and wishful thinking in the heart of clinical medicine, about the seductions of myth, and the final stubbornness of facts.



Placebo

Author : Fabrizio Benedetti

Publisher : Springer

Page : 307 pages

File Size : 14,71 MB

Release : 2014-10-10

Category : Medical

ISBN : 3662445190

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Book Description

Due to the recent explosion of placebo research at many levels the Editors believe that a volume on Placebo would be a good addition to the Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology series. In particular, this volume will be built up on a meeting on Placebo which will be held in Tuebingen (Germany) in January 2013, and where the most prominent researchers in this field will present and exchange their ideas. The authors who will be invited to write chapters for this volume will be the very same speakers at this meeting, thus guaranteeing high standard and excellence in the topic that will be treated. The approach of the book is mainly pharmacological, including basic research and clinical trials, and the contents range from different medical conditions and systems, such as pain and the immune system, to different experimental approaches, like in vivo receptor binding and pharmacological/behavioral conditioning. Overall, the volume will give an idea of modern placebo research, of timely concepts in both experimental and clinical pharmacology, as well as of modern methods and tools in neuroscience.



Anatomy of an Epidemic

Author : Robert Whitaker

Publisher : Crown

Page : 418 pages

File Size : 26,53 MB

Release : 2010-04-13

Category : Psychology

ISBN : 0307452433

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Book Description

Updated with bonus material, including a new foreword and afterword with new research, this New York Times bestseller is essential reading for a time when mental health is constantly in the news. In this astonishing and startling book, award-winning science and history writer Robert Whitaker investigates a medical mystery: Why has the number of disabled mentally ill in the United States tripled over the past two decades? Interwoven with Whitaker’s groundbreaking analysis of the merits of psychiatric medications are the personal stories of children and adults swept up in this epidemic. As Anatomy of an Epidemic reveals, other societies have begun to alter their use of psychiatric medications and are now reporting much improved outcomes . . . so why can’t such change happen here in the United States? Why have the results from these long-term studies—all of which point to the same startling conclusion—been kept from the public? Our nation has been hit by an epidemic of disabling mental illness, and yet, as Anatomy of an Epidemic reveals, the medical blueprints for curbing that epidemic have already been drawn up. Praise for Anatomy of an Epidemic “The timing of Robert Whitaker’s Anatomy of an Epidemic, a comprehensive and highly readable history of psychiatry in the United States, couldn’t be better.”—Salon “Anatomy of an Epidemic offers some answers, charting controversial ground with mystery-novel pacing.”—TIME “Lucid, pointed and important, Anatomy of an Epidemic should be required reading for anyone considering extended use of psychiatric medicine. Whitaker is at the height of his powers.” —Greg Critser, author of Generation Rx



Listening to Prozac

Author : Peter D. Kramer

Publisher : Penguin

Page : 481 pages

File Size : 19,72 MB

Release : 1997-09-01

Category : Psychology

ISBN : 0140266712

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Book Description

The New York Times bestselling examination of the revolutionary antidepressant, with a new introduction and afterword reflecting on Prozac’s legacy and the latest medical research “Peter Kramer is an analyst of exceptional sensitivity and insight. To read his prose on virtually any subject is to be provoked, enthralled, illuminated.” —Joyce Carol Oates When antidepressants like Prozac first became available, Peter D. Kramer prescribed them, only to hear patients say that on medication, they felt different—less ill at ease, more like the person they had always imagined themselves to be. Referencing disciplines from cellular biology to animal ethology, Dr. Kramer worked to explain these reports. The result was Listening to Prozac, a revolutionary book that offered new perspectives on antidepressants, mood disorders, and our understanding of the self—and that became an instant national and international bestseller. In this thirtieth anniversary edition, Dr. Kramer looks back at the influence of his groundbreaking book, traces progress in the relevant sciences, follows trends in the use and public understanding of antidepressants, and assesses potential breakthroughs in the treatment of depression. The new introduction and afterword reinforce and reinvigorate a book that the New York Times called “originally insightful” and “intelligent and informative,” a window on a medicine that is “telling us new things about the chemistry of human character.”



Let Them Eat Prozac

Author : David Healy

Publisher : NYU Press

Page : 367 pages

File Size : 18,46 MB

Release : 2006-10

Category : Medical

ISBN : 0814736971

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Book Description

A psychiatrist provides an insider account on the controversial use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) Prozac. Paxil. Zoloft. Turn on your television and you are likely to see a commercial for one of the many selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) on the market. We hear a lot about them, but do we really understand how these drugs work and what risks are involved for anyone who uses them? Let Them Eat Prozac explores the history of SSRIs—from their early development to their latest marketing campaigns—and the controversies that surround them. Initially, they seemed like wonder drugs for those with mild to moderate depression. When Prozac was released in the late 1980s, David Healy was among the psychiatrists who prescribed it. But he soon observed that some of these patients became agitated and even attempted suicide. Could the new wonder drug actually be making patients worse? Healy draws on his own research and expertise to demonstrate the potential hazards associated with these drugs. He intersperses case histories with insider accounts of the research leading to the development and approval of SSRIs as a treatment for depression. Let Them Eat Prozac clearly demonstrates that the problems go much deeper than a side-effect of a particular drug. The pharmaceutical industry would like us to believe that SSRIs can safely treat depression, anxiety, and a host of other mental problems. But, as Let Them Eat Prozac reveals, this “cure” may be worse than the disease.



Ordinarily Well

Author : Peter D. Kramer

Publisher : Macmillan + ORM

Page : 322 pages

File Size : 48,61 MB

Release : 2016-06-07

Category : Psychology

ISBN : 0374708967

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Book Description

Do antidepressants work, or are they glorified dummy pills? How can we tell? In Ordinarily Well, the celebrated psychiatrist and author Peter D. Kramer examines the growing controversy about the popular medications. A practicing doctor who trained as a psychotherapist and worked with pioneers in psychopharmacology, Kramer combines moving accounts of his patients’ dilemmas with an eye-opening history of drug research to cast antidepressants in a new light. Kramer homes in on the moment of clinical decision making: Prescribe or not? What evidence should doctors bring to bear? Using the wide range of reference that readers have come to expect in his books, he traces and critiques the growth of skepticism toward antidepressants. He examines industry-sponsored research, highlighting its shortcomings. He unpacks the “inside baseball” of psychiatry—statistics—and shows how findings can be skewed toward desired conclusions. Kramer never loses sight of patients. He writes with empathy about his clinical encounters over decades as he weighed treatments, analyzed trial results, and observed medications’ influence on his patients’ symptoms, behavior, careers, families, and quality of life. He updates his prior writing about the nature of depression as a destructive illness and the effect of antidepressants on traits like low self-worth. Crucially, he shows how antidepressants act in practice: less often as miracle cures than as useful, and welcome, tools for helping troubled people achieve an underrated goal—becoming ordinarily well.



Blaming the Brain

Author : Elliot Valenstein

Publisher : Simon and Schuster

Page : 312 pages

File Size : 31,44 MB

Release : 2002-02

Category : Psychology

ISBN : 0743237870

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Book Description

In Blaming the Brain Elliott Valenstein exposes the many weaknesses inherent in the scientific arguments supporting the widely accepted theory that biochemical imbalances are the main cause of mental illness. He lays bare the commercial motives of drug companies and their huge stake in expanding their markets. This provocative book will force patients, practitioners, and prescribers alike to rethink the causes of mental illness and the methods by which we treat it.



Drug Prescriber Survival Guide

Author : Steven L Dubovsky, Md

Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company

Page : 204 pages

File Size : 35,11 MB

Release : 2007-03-20

Category : Medical

ISBN : 9780393705102

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Book Description

The effective treatment of many mental health conditions necessitates that clinicians prescribe medications. Considerations for ethical treatment, however, demand that clinicians be wary of advertising hype, aggressive sales pitches, and confusing statistical methods. Psychotropic Drug Prescriber's Survival Guide is a long-awaited primer on the basic principles of pharmaceutical research, statistical methods, and health care ethics. The common sense approach of the authors enables practitioners to use information about psychiatric medications intelligently and to develop responsible prescribing practices. This book appears at a time when new guidelines are emerging every day in response to growing public concern about industry marketing. The authors write within the context of this changing policy environment and apprise readers of what is developing in terms of regulations and what impact those regulations will have on their practice. However, sensible prescribers recognize that responsible treatment still cannot depend on external controls. Psychotropic Drug Prescriber's Survival Guide helps clinicians negotiate this complex situation and arms them with strategies for getting to the facts in an era in which solid science competes with marketing fictions.



The Emperor of All Maladies

Author : Siddhartha Mukherjee

Publisher : Simon and Schuster

Page : 624 pages

File Size : 18,62 MB

Release : 2011-08-09

Category : Health & Fitness

ISBN : 1439170916

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Book Description

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, this New York Times bestseller is “an extraordinary achievement” (The New Yorker)—a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer—from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence. Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with—and perished from—for more than five thousand years. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out “war against cancer.” The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist. Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments. It is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.