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Description of  Desperate Remedies: Psychiatry s Turbulent Quest to Cure Mental Illness

A sweeping history of American psychiatryfrom the mental hospital to the brain labthat reveals the devastating treatments doctors have inflicted on their patients (especially women) in the name of science and questions our massive reliance on meds. For more than two hundred years, disturbances of the mindthe sorts of things that were once called madnesshave been studied and treated by the medical profession. Mental illness, some insist, is a disease like any other, whose origins can be identified and from which one can be cured. But is this true? In this masterful account of Americas quest to understand and treat everything from anxiety to psychosis, one of the most provocative thinkers writing about psychiatry today sheds light on its tumultuous past. Read more