Review: Cracked: The Unhappy Truth about Psychiatry by James Davies

5 stars for Cracked: The Unhappy Truth about Psychiatry by James Davies.

The book is easy to read, thought provoking and it challenges what we think we know about psychiatry - the study and treatment of mental illness, emotional disturbance, and abnormal behaviour. It should be read by anyone who thinks there is a pill that will fix your problems, and by everyone who is concerned on the basic humanity and social well-being.

The official story we often hear is that psychiatry has the tools and knowledge at its disposal to help us when our lives break down. In reality, the psychiatry industry has often resorted to half-truths and cover-ups. The book addresses the pressing issues with psychiatry, breaks them down and tells it all.

- Why has psychiatry become the fastest-growing medical specialism when it still has the poorest curative success?

- Why are psychiatric drugs now more widely prescribed than almost any other medical drugs in history, despite their dubious efficacy?

- Why does psychiatry, without solid scientific justification, keep expanding the number of mental disorders it believes to exist — from 106 in 1952, to 374 today? What is going on?

- What role does our biology play in our mental distress?

The truth is never far behind. There is no smoke without fire. It is an unfortunate but ugly truth. And the truth is, psychiatry can be explained simply as the lure of power and money putting the pursuit of pharmaceutical riches and medical status above that of patients’ well-being.

Written to create and heighten awareness, this book educates and enables people to be better informed about the current state psychiatry is in; to get away from the escalating craze for psychiatric drugs and diagnoses. As the proverb goes "all that glitters is not gold", we need to be wary of what we read in the news and decide for ourselves what the truth is.

If you are not already aware of the numerous doctors being enticed by huge pharmaceutical rewards into creating more disorders and prescribing more pills, of the psychiatric organization concealing information and distorting the facts, this book is a good place to start.


Publisher: Pegasus Books; 1 edition
Publication date: 15 Aug 2014

*** Favourite quote 1 ***

...pharmaceutical companies have histories of concealing evidence that they deem inconvenient.

...whether this concealment is achieved by crudely suppressing negative data or by subtly manipulating research to show their drugs in the most positive light, the unpalatable truth about psychiatric drugs is that manipulation of research has been a critical reason for their popular success.

...nearly all research into psychiatric drugs is today sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry and how this arrangement has led to the compromise of basic scientific standards, and at worst to the outright manipulation of research with the aim of maintaining or increasing company profits.

*** Favourite quote 2 ***

...psychiatry has reclassified more and more of our natural human behaviors and feelings as psychiatric disorders requiring treatment. By doing so, psychiatry has not only expanded its jurisdiction over more of us (one in four of us apparently now suffers from a mental disorder) but has also, by inflating the number of mental disorders, created a huge market for psychiatric treatments.

The preferred treatments are pharmaceutical treatments such as antidepressants and antipsychotics.

But the emerging reality is that these treatments don’t actually work in the way most people believe.

~ Cracked: The Unhappy Truth about Psychiatry
James Davies

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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.

Readers 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.

*Blurb from Goodreads*

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