Reviewed by Fritz;

Whitaker, Robert. Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill. Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2002.

This engaging narrative, by an award winning investigative journalist who possessed no particular distrust for the psychiatric system until his research started leading him deeper and deeper, is the most readable and gripping account of the history of psychiatric abuse, and it’s context as a tool for social control, ever written.

Whitaker follows the development of the psychiatric system from the 1700s, when supposedly biological concepts of “madness” were first developed, blamed on improper circulation of blood and other pseudo scientific theories, and used to justify depriving such labeled people of liberty, and subjecting them to torturous “treatments” such as whipping, emetics, bleeding, blistering, spinning, and ice baths, throughout the eugenics era which popularized the notion that “mentally ill” people represented a genetically inferior class of humanity, leading to forced sterilization, and paving the road for “brain damaging therapeutics” such as lobotomy, insulin coma, and electroshock, which set the stage for the present day reliance on psychiatric drugs to cause brain damage in people who have now been supposedly determined to have “chemical imbalances in the brain” with no more accuracy than any of the previous theories used to justify the abuse of people considered socially inconvenient.

Whitaker packs his expose with quotes from sources such as medical documents and media propaganda, including much historical evidence that hasn’t seen the light of day for over a hundred years. Pairing this with his equally well documented criticism of the modern manifestations of psychiatry creates a historical context for present day abuses which is a uniquely powerful read.

Whitaker chooses to focus on Schizophrenia and antipsychotics, to the neglect of other categories of diagnosis, and drug, which in my opinion seems to artificially narrow the applicability of his analysis, but it makes sense to me why he did this, he was trying to preserve as linear a structure as possible for greater clarity. The only spot where the narrative weakens is where he gets distracted by rhapsodizing about the various “alternative” philosophies for treating madness that have occasionally cropped up, such as the Quakers moral treatment, or Moshers Soteria project, but Whitaker is not pulling any punches when it comes to the psychiatric techniques he sees as truly harmful. His brave assertion that antipsychotic drugs are the primary cause of what we now consider schizophrenia is probably thus far unique amongst mainstream published literature on the subject, but his in depth research backs it up elegantly. Anyone who wants to understand the truth about psychiatry and “mental illness” should read this book.

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