Description: Before Prozac : The Troubled History of Mood Disorders in Psychiatry, Hardcover by Shorter, Edward, ISBN 0195368746, ISBN-13 9780195368741, Like New Used, Free P&P in the UK Psychiatry today is a barren tundra, writes medical historian Edward Shorter, where drugs that dont work are used to treat diseases that dont exist. In this provocative volume, Shorter illuminates this dismal landscape, in a revealing account of why psychiatry is "losing ground" in the
struggle to treat depression.
Naturally, th looks at such culprits as the pharmaceutical industry, which is not inclined to market drugs once the patent expires, leading to the endless introduction of new--but not necessarily better--drugs. But the heart of th focuses on an unexpected villain: the FDA, the very
agency charged with ensuring drug safety and effectiveness. Shorter describes how the FDA permits companies to test new products only against placebo. If you can beat sugar pills, you get your drug licensed, whether or not it is actually better than (or even as good as) current medications, thus
sweeping from the shelves drugs that may be superior but have lost patent protection. Th also examines the FDAs early power struggles against the drug industry, an influence-grab that had little to do with science, and which left barbiturates, opiates, and amphetamines all underprescribed,
despite the fact that under careful supervision they are better at treating depression, with fewer side effects, than the newer drugs in the Prozac family. Shorter also castigates academia, showing how two forms of depression, melancholia and nonmelancholia--"as different from each other as chalk
and cheese"--became squeezed into one dubious classification, major depression, which was essentially a political artifact born of academic infighting.
An astonishing and troubling look at modern psychiatry, Losing Ground is a book that is sure to spark controversy for years to come.
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Book Title: Before Prozac : The Troubled History of Mood Disorders in Psychia
Number of Pages: 320 Pages
Publication Name: Before Prozac: the Troubled History of Mood Disorders in Psychiatry
Language: English
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Item Height: 244 mm
Subject: Medicine, Psychology
Publication Year: 2008
Type: Textbook
Item Weight: 590 g
Subject Area: Clinical Psychology
Author: Edward Shorter
Item Width: 160 mm
Format: Hardcover
