Anatomy of an Epidemic

✍ Scribed by Whitaker, Robert

• Book ID: 107486871
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 1 MB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9780307452436

✦ Synopsis

In this astonishing and startling book, award-winning science and history writer Robert Whitaker investigates a medical mystery: Why has the number of disabled mentally ill in the United States tripled over the past two decades? Every day, 1,100 adults and children are added to the government disability rolls because they have become newly disabled by mental illness, with this epidemic spreading most rapidly among our nation's children. What is going on?

Anatomy of an Epidemic challenges readers to think through that question themselves. First, Whitaker investigates what is known today about the biological causes of mental disorders. Do psychiatric medications fix ''chemical imbalances'' in the brain, or do they, in fact, create them? Researchers spent decades studying that question, and by the late 1980s, they had their answer. Readers will be startled--and dismayed--to discover what was reported in the scientific journals.

Then comes...