Anatomy of an Epidemic is the single best book I have ever read when it comes to understanding the forces that have shaped America’s current approach to mental health, which has resulted in record suicide numbers and record disability numbers. Pulitzer Prize finalist Robert Whitaker introduces you to the forces that have brought us to where we are today:
- Big Pharma and the billions of dollars they reap globally from the drugs they sell.
- The American Psychiatric Association, which threw in with Big Pharma in 1980.
- The biggest names among American research universities, whose buildings are built by and whose research is funded by Big Pharma.
- The “thought leaders” (who get paid for their opinions by Big Pharma) who lead chemical research efforts and run the clinical trials that are run at those universities.
- The American media, whose largest accounts are with Big Pharma.
- The FDA, whose researchers and administrators move between academic research (funded by Big Pharma), the FDA (which approves Big Pharma’s work), and Big Pharma itself. You’ll learn that the FDA isn’t a “watchdog,” but is the “handmaiden” of Big Pharma.
Whitaker calls for a new approach in the treatment of those who are looking for help with “mental health” issues. He wants us to understand that human beings are emotional creatures and that anxiety, stress, grief, and anger are all human cues that we need to grow as people — that numbing those signals is not conducive to long-term mental health. He offers a stunning fact:
Every nation that has embraced this American “pharmacological” model has more people in therapy; more people with a mental health diagnosis, more people on prescription medications, which has resulted in more people on disability rolls and more suicide. Every single nation has the same results.
As he concludes this wonderful book, Whitaker makes the case for a new treatment model. He argues that history teaches us that “depression” is overwhelmingly linked to life events and is overcome by 80% of people within a year. He shows us that schizophrenia patients have similar numbers IF we do not medicate those individuals and IF we embrace them as brothers and sister and treat the root causes and not merely their behavior. He argues that we should be slow to medicate; quicker to embrace human struggles as brothers and sisters in that struggle, that we should look for physical issues that might be exacerbating mental health issues; and all of that should be done before we medicate. AND, when we do medicate, that should be done for brief periods of time with low doses of medications with an eye towards tapering everyone who goes down this “medicated” path off those medications so they can live quality lives with their families and friends.
Whitaker is a wonderful writer, and his writing reads like a novel. Anatomy of an Epidemic is available everywhere.