The Sedated Society

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvi

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • James Davies

   Pages 1-22

3. Psychopharmacology Is Not Evidence-Based Medicine

   • Peter C. Gøtzsche

   Pages 23-49

4. Starting Young: Children Cultured into Becoming Psycho-Pharmaceutical Consumers—The Example of Childhood Depression

   • Sami Timimi

   Pages 51-71

5. Opium and the People: The Prescription Psychopharmaceutical Epidemic in Historical Context

   • Joanna Moncrieff

   Pages 73-99

6. Desperate for a Fix: My Story of Pharmaceutical Misadventure

   • Luke Montagu

   Pages 101-121

7. Neuroleptic (Antipsychotic) Drugs: An Epidemic of Tardive Dyskinesia and Related Brain Injuries Afflicting Tens of Millions

   • Peter R. Breggin

   Pages 123-161

8. Psychiatry Under the Influence

   • Robert Whitaker

   Pages 163-188

9. Political Pills: Psychopharmaceuticals and Neoliberalism as Mutually Supporting

   • James Davies

   Pages 189-225

10. Psychopharmaceuticals as ‘Essential Medicines’: Local Negotiations of Global Access to Psychotherapeutic Medicines in India

    • China Mills

    Pages 227-248

11. The Public and Private Lives of Psychopharmaceuticals in the Global South

    • Stefan Ecks

    Pages 249-269

12. A Manifesto for Psychological Health and Wellbeing

    • Peter Kinderman

    Pages 271-301

13. Back Matter

    Pages 303-318

    PDF

This edited volume provides an answer to a rising public health concern: what drives the over prescription of psychiatric medication epidemic? Over 15% of the UK public takes a psychiatric medication on any given day, and the numbers are only set to increase. Placing this figure alongside the emerging clinical and scientific data revealing their poor outcomes and the harms these medications often cause, their commercial success cannot be explained by their therapeutic efficacy.
Chapters from an interdisciplinary team of global experts in critical psychopharmacology rigorously examine how pharmaceutical sponsorship and marketing, diagnostic inflation, the manipulation and burying of negative clinical trials, lax medication regulation, and neoliberal public health policies have all been implicated in ever-rising psycho-pharmaceutical consumption. This volume will ignite a long-overdue public debate. It will be of interest to professionals in the field of mental health and researchers ranging from sociology of health, to medical anthropology and the political economy of health.

• Critical Psychiatry
• Prescriptions
• Medicalising
• Mental Health
• Psychology

“I can recommend The Sedated Society as a stimulating case for the existence of overprescription and for the acknowledgment of the various harms associated with psychiatric medications. … Mental health clinicians, service-users, and researchers of all stripes will find the volume of interest.” (Daniel J. Dunleavy, metapsychology online reviews, metapsychology.mentalhelp.net, Vol. 22 (4), January, 2018)

“The most authoritative and wide-ranging critique yet published of the global trend towards chemical management of psychological and social problems ... . Hard-hitting, scholarly and highly readable.” (Professor David Ingleby, Centre for Social Science and Global Health, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

“The Sedated Society is a provocative critique of the over-prescription psychiatric drugs, their minimal effectiveness, and the dangers they pose.  The authors are eminent experts and their conclusions are important and troubling. It should be required reading for all medical students.” (Prof Irving Kirsch, Associate Director at the Harvard Medical School, USA)

“A brilliant revelation of our drug-hooked world … .With admirable clarity and panache the contributors chart the incredible story of bad science, naivety and greed that has enslaved the lives of millions.” (Paul Flynn MP, Shadow Leader of the House of Commons)

• Department of Life Sciences, University of Roehampton, London, United Kingdom

  James Davies

James Davies holds a PhD in social and medical anthropology from the University of Oxford, UK. He is a Reader in social anthropology and mental health at the University of Roehampton, UK, practicing psychotherapist, and author of three books.

Policies and ethics