The Mental Health Consequences of Torture or Comfortably Numb

The Mental Health Consequences of Torture

Author: Ellen T Gerrity

In 1997 the National Institute of Mental Health assembled a working group of international experts to address the mental health consequences of torture and related violence and trauma; report on the status of scientific knowledge; and include research recommendations with implications for treatment, services, and policy development. This book, dedicated to those who experience the horrors of torture and those who work to end it, is based on that report.

Booknews

Gerrity (National Institute of Mental Health), Keane (psychiatry, Boston U. School of Medicine) and Tuma (National Institute of Mental Health) present a review of the scientific evidence about the mental health consequences of torture and related violence and trauma. As a broadly focused review, the work addresses such topics as the short- and long-term psychological, neurobiological, social, economic, and disability-related consequences of such trauma: models for studying these consequences; treatment and rehabilitation for survivors; and models for delivering mental health services. Research information related to public policy, legal issues, and caregiving is included. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Interesting textbook: That Amazing Grace or Yoga Stretch For Fitness

Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation

Author: Charles Barber

Public perceptions of mental health issues have changed dramatically over the last fifteen years, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the rampant overmedication of ordinary Americans. In 2006, 227 million antidepressant prescriptions were dispensed in the United States, more than any other class of medication; in that same year, the United States accounted for 66 percent of the global antidepressant market. In Comfortably Numb, Charles Barber provides a much-needed context for this disturbing phenomenon.

Barber explores the ways in which pharmaceutical companies first create the need for a drug and then rush to fill it, and he reveals that the increasing pressure Americans are under to medicate themselves (direct-to-consumer advertising, fewer nondrug therapeutic options, the promise of the quick fix, the blurring of distinction between mental illness and everyday problems). Most importantly, he convincingly argues that without an industry to promote them, non-pharmaceutical approaches that could have the potential to help millions are tragically overlooked by a nation that sees drugs as an instant cure for all emotional difficulties.

Here is an unprecedented account of the impact of psychiatric medications on American culture and on Americans themselves.

Kirkus Reviews

A sharply critical look at the way antidepressants are marketed and prescribed in the United States. While the mentally ill aren't receiving the treatment they need, Americans with ordinary life problems are being overmedicated, writes Barber (Psychiatry/Yale School of Medicine; Songs from the Black Chair: A Memoir of Mental Interiors, 2005). Though not a psychiatrist, he has a decade of professional experience working with mentally ill homeless people. He severely criticizes the pharmaceutical industry but places much of the blame on the medical profession, charging that at a time when the understanding of psychiatric drugs remains crude, doctors are too willing to prescribe the pills that patients request after seeing them advertised on television. The author divides the book into two parts. The first provides a capsule history of psychiatry in the United States and examines the shortcomings of the currently ascendant biological, or neuropsychiatric, approach. Barber attacks with shocking statistics (in 2006, 227 million antidepressant prescriptions were dispensed to Americans, up by 30 million from the 2002 levels) and punchy prose: "Psychiatry [is] jettisoning the impoverished mentally ill for the cash-carrying worried well." He reserves particular mockery for the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic manual, citing its recent introduction of Motivational Deficiency Disorder as a nonsensical medicalization of laziness. Part Two advocates the use of an alternative, cognitive-behavioral therapy. The author spells out details of two related treatment approaches: the Stages of Change model, which recognizes that change is a dynamic process in which relapse is a realistic part of acontinuum; and Motivational Interviewing, in which the therapist uses a technique of empathetic listening that centers on the client's ambivalence about change. Barber articulately and persuasively counsels that it's time to abandon the quick-fix, pop-a-pill approach.