Name: Anatomy of an Epidemic
ISBN: 9780307452412

Robert Whitaker

The award-winning author of Mad in America presents a controversial assessment of the rise in mental illness-related disabilities that considers if drug-based care may be fueling illness rates throughout the past half century.

Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America

Anatomy of an Epidemic

Hannah Yang

Like many others who have reviewed this book, I found Anatomy of an Epidemic's central argument fascinating and even convincing at some points, but Whitaker's narrow-minded approach really undercut the book's potential. The chapters are quite repetitive and tell the same story over and over again: drugs don't help long-term outcomes and may even be harmful, psychiatry is an evil industry and a failure to its patients, etc. While the questions Whitaker is asking and the conclusions he's drawing are important, I think he'll lose a lot of people with the arrogant way in which he completely dismisses the benefits of psychiatry (until his conclusion, which offers a slightly fairer view with more qualifiers).

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