Robert Whitaker | Anatomy of an Epidemic

“As a society, we put our trust in the medical profession to develop the best possible clinical care for diseases and ailments of all types. We expect that the profession will be honest with us as it goes about this task. And yet, as we look for ways to stem the epidemic of disabling mental illness that has erupted in this country, we cannot trust psychiatry, as a profession, to fulfill that responsibility.

For the past twenty-five years, the psychiatric establishment has told us a false story. It told us that schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar illness are known to be brain diseases, even though—as the MindFreedom hunger strike revealed—it can’t direct us to any scientific studies that document this claim. It told us that psychiatric medications fix chemical imbalances in the brain, even though decades of research failed to find this to be so. It told us that Prozac and the other second-generation psychotropics were much better and safer than the first-generation drugs, even though the clinical studies had shown no such thing. Most important of all, the psychiatric establishment failed to tell us that the drugs worsen long-term outcomes.” Robert Whitaker