Cracked

The Unhappy Truth About Psychiatry

By: James Davies

Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin

Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's summary

An expose of the current state of psychiatry that reveals how the pursuit of pharmaceutical riches has compromised the patients' well-being.

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. Listeners 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 to ever win back its patients' trust.

©2013 John Davies (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Wake up call!

This book has to be one of the most enlightening books I’ve ever read on the subject. I was a person who was on medication for a number of years. I decided to wean myself off, and consequently, I’m actually doing much better. This is not the case with everyone, but it was with me. One of the main points I learned from this book is that whenever we go through difficult times in our lives, we need to let the natural recourse take place instead of trying to patch up our lives and emotions with medications. It’s a shame that the psychiatric industry is manipulating people’s health for their own profit.

Author is an idiot

It is easy to beat on psychiatrists. They have a difficult job that anyone would struggle to do. They also got into their job for money and many sold out for more of it. Some of them are total idiots.

Somehow Davies nevertheless struggles to beat on them. He interrogates the head a psychiatrist professional organization toward the end of the book and gets ends up looking like a schoolboy. He includes an appendix where he discusses how people who take pills tend to be sicker than people who don't and draws the conclusion that the pills made them sick. I think he says a few times that maybe, perhaps, the people are taking the pills because they are sick but we should just ignore that possibility because it is so improbable. His discussion of Irving Kirsche work makes subtle statistical errors, but those are probably forgivable. He does a pretty good job discussing the obvious problems with the DSM.

Psychiatrists win this round, but they really shouldn't have.

Read Mind Fixers by Anne Harrington or The Book of Woe by Gary Greenburg instead.