Cracked: The Unhappy Truth about Psychiatry

A “thought-provoking” look at the psychiatric profession, the overprescribing of pharmaceuticals, and the cost to patients’ health (Booklist).
 In an effort to enlighten a new generation about its growing reliance on psychiatry, this illuminating volume investigates why psychiatry has become the fastest-growing medical field in history; why psychiatric drugs are now more widely prescribed than ever before; and why psychiatry, without solid scientific justification, keeps expanding the number of mental disorders it believes to exist. This revealing volume shows that these issues can be explained by one startling fact: In recent decades, psychiatry has become so motivated by power that it has put the pursuit of pharmaceutical riches above its patients’ well-being. Readers will be shocked and dismayed to discover that psychiatry, in the name of helping others, has actually been helping itself. In a style reminiscent of Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science and investigative in tone, James Davies reveals psychiatry’s hidden failings and how the field of study must change if it is ever to win back its patients’ trust.