PART ONE: AN ILLUSION OF PROGRESS -- 1. A smashing success? -- 2. The appliance of science: the emergence of psychiatry as a medical discipline -- 3. Therapeutic innovation at the end of the asylum era -- 4. Dissent and resolution: the triumph of biological psychiatry -- PART TWO: THREE MYTHS ABOUT MENTAL ILLNESS -- 5. People or plants? The myth that psychiatric diagnoses are meaningful -- 6. The fundamental error of psychiatry: the myth that psychiatric disorders are genetic diseases -- 7. Brains, minds and psychosis: the myth that mental illnesses are brain diseases -- PART THREE: MEDICINE FOR MADNESS -- 8. Science, profit and politics in the conduct of clinical trials -- 9. Less is probably better: the benefits and costs of antipsychotics -- 10. The virtue of kindness: is psychotherapy effective for severe mental illness -- 11. What kind of psychiatry do you want?
Summary
Towards the end of the 20th century, the solution to mental illness seemed to be found. It lay in biological solutions. Arguing for a future of mental health treatment that focuses as much on patients as individuals as on the brain itself, this book intends to redefine our understanding of the treatment of madness in the twenty-first century
