Engaging the World on Health Equity Through ReadingMain MenuIntroductionWhy these books?Ailing in Place: Environmental Inequities and Health Disparities in AppalachiaMichele MorroneAmerican Health Crisis: One Hundred Years of Panic, Planning, and PoliticsMartin HalliwellAmerica’s Arab Refugees: Vulnerability and Health on the MarginsMarcia C. InhornBedlam: An Intimate Journey into America's Mental Health CrisisKenneth Paul RosenbergBlack Death at the Golden Gate: The Race to Save America from the Bubonic PlagueDavid K RandallChanging Planet, Changing Health: How the Climate Crisis Threatens Our Health and What We Can Do about ItPaul R. Epstein (Author), Dan Ferber (Author), Jeffrey Sachs (Foreword)CherryNico WalkerDelugeLelia ChattiDying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and HealthKeith WailooA Family History of Illness: Memory as MedicineBrett L. WalkerThe Family Roe: An American StoryJoshua PragerFit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1939Natalia MolinaHaiti: After the EarthquakePaul FarmerHow the Other Half Eats: The Untold Story of Food and Inequality in AmericaPriya Fielding-Singh, PhDMad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally IllRobert WhitakerNot Invisible: A Collection of Poems about Chronic IllnessTiffany MoharPushing Cool: Big Tobacco, Racial Marketing, and the Untold Story of the Menthol CigaretteKeith WailooSince the House is BurningTale of Two PlanetsJohn Freeman (editor)Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our NationLinda VillarosaUnwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made WorldElinor CleghornWhat Happens Is NeitherAngela Narciso TorresWhat the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American CityMona Hanna-AttishaWhich Country Has the World's Best Health Care?Ezekiel J. EmanuelAbout the curatorAcknowledgementsVesper North9c258319e12f98ebd7884dfac94793204ec38858Chapman University
keywords: mental health, schizophrenia, healthcare, United States, history
An updated edition of the classic history of schizophrenia in America, which gives voice to generations of patients who suffered through “cures” that only deepened their suffering and impaired their hope of recovery
Schizophrenics in the United States currently fare worse than patients in the world’s poorest countries. In Mad in America, medical journalist Robert Whitaker argues that modern treatments for the severely mentally ill are just old medicine in new bottles, and that we as a society are deeply deluded about their efficacy.
The widespread use of lobotomies in the 1920s and 1930s gave way in the 1950s to electroshock and a wave of new drugs. In what is perhaps Whitaker’s most damning revelation, Mad in America examines how drug companies in the 1980s and 1990s skewed their studies to prove that new antipsychotic drugs were more effective than the old, while keeping patients in the dark about dangerous side effects.
A haunting, deeply compassionate book — updated with a new introduction and prologue bringing in the latest medical treatments and trends — Mad in America raises important questions about our obligations to the mad, the meaning of “insanity,” and what we value most about the human mind.
ISBN: 978-1-5416-1806-0 Publication: September 2019 Publisher: Basic Books