The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power. I found it at times got too "sensational" and less rational (as a book like this should be), relying on rhetoric and emotions. Davies' writing here is excellent. He writes with an easy and engaging style that easily holds the reader's attention. And despite fielding some technical subject matter, Davies presents this content in a manner that will be accessible to even the scientifically illiterate layperson. Points to the author here for this effective communication. This is a very well-written book-intellectually sound, but written in an accessible way...It should be read by all mental health professionals, by all politicians and policy makers charged with shaping future mental health provision"

Cracked by M James Davies | Waterstones Cracked by M James Davies | Waterstones

This means there is a reliability problem in the field, which casts serious doubts on the entire DSM-structured paradigm. Indeed, the problems within the field of psychiatry often see the same patients receiving differing and possibly conflicting diagnoses at an alarmingly high rate: I will say.. One concept that stood out to me was the difference between the disease-centered model and the drug-centered model. James Davies quotes Dr. Joanna Moncrieff as she explains the difference, “In the disease-centred model, people are assumed to have a mental disease, a problem in their brain. And drugs are thought to be effective because they rectify or reverse that underlying brain problem in some way… But the drug-centred model… rather emphasises that drugs are drugs; they are chemical substances that are foreign to the human body but which affect the way people think and feel. They have psychoactive properties, just like recreational drugs do, which alter the way the body functions at a physiological level.” (103) In recent years such disproving research has begun to erode the profession’s faith in the chemical imbalance theory. This has led increasing numbers of prominent figures in the mental health profession to declare their defection publicly. To pique your interest in this sea -change, here are a few quotations I’ve managed to gather: I can’t urge the reading of this book strongly enough. Anyone who cares about what it means to be a fully human being, and especially anyone involved in any way in the caring professions needs to be aware of what Davies lays clear about the mental health industry. For industry it surely is.At Roehampton, we provide a wide range of opportunities for you to get involved, through volunteering, playing sport or music, or joining one of our many active student societies. We also have a beautiful parkland campus, in the heart of south-west London. Everytime we take a pill for something there will be consequences of some sort as it is not a natural way to treat our bodies. Our job is to determine whether the consequence of the drug is worse than the initial problem. The scandal is that we are often not informed about the potential consequence or alternative approaches which may be more effective and less harmful. I can't believe that drug companies can have this type of relationship with health professionals--effectively paying them to use and aggressively promote their products to patients. Of course, the professionals are then going to prescribe these drugs, no one is immune to this kind of monetary temptation. For anyone interested in the sociology of psychiatry and other themes raised in this book, I recommend instead:

Cracked: Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm Than Good - James

The RSP president argues that the current methods enable them to get mental health funding. The DSM people that they expect users, somewhat Biblically, to make their own interpretations rather than taking the DSM literally. The latter seems a general issue in anything to do with personality and social policy – people using questionnaires and methods literally; not finding out who the person/s are before making decisions about them. You can add your own here. b) there needs to be more thorough regulation an transparency regarding psychiatry's financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry It has taken me a while to get around to writing this review because I felt that I needed time to do it justice. In many ways this is a scary book and I feel that I might need to read something that puts the other side of the story to really feel that I have a reasonable grasp of the issues. Under the leadership of Dr Spitzer, a team of fifteen psychiatrists were assembled to begin the writing of the DSM III to fix this crisis (p.13). However, Davies reports that even after the DSM III had been published, when a group of psychiatrists were asked if diagnostic reliability had increased, ‘a full 86 per cent said that reliability was still poor’. Davies goes on to say: ‘Another study published in 2006 showed that reliability has not improved in 30 years’ (p.18).Essentially, my take on this book is that the author points a dammning finger at the psychiatric profession and the drug companies that support them. James Davies is a qualified psychotherapist and has worked with the British NHS. He has a Phd in medical and social anthropology (whatever that actually is). Well I actually googled his thesis and found an interesting interview with him (see: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/bl...) and this is what he has to say about his thesis:

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

To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Medical naming encourages thinking about human beings in all their complexity as broken, and needing mending – and opens the door to the over-prescription. In fact, as one astute expert (among the many) Davies consults, points out tersely, this thinking of these drugs as ‘cures’ is erroneous, as unlike most physiological disease there just is no hard evidence to support the biology of a lot of what is now being treated as ‘disease’ through these medications – which alter mood. They do not ‘cure’ shyness, (or, lets medicalise it as social phobia) any more than a glass of wine ‘cures’ shyness – both change ways of perceiving the world, that is all. In Britain, approaching a quarter of the adult population take a psychiatric drug in a year, an increase of over 500% since 1980. Despite this rise in prescriptions, the prevalence of mental health problems and disability have also increased. This is an excellent book...(it) careens, almost literally, from one psychiatric outrage to the next...I strongly recommend this book."It is exposed this week in a new book that should be read by every doctor, and also by everyone in politics and the media, not to mention any concerned citizen.” Chemical imbalance is sort of last-century thinking. It’s much more complicated than that.’ (Dr Joseph Coyle, Professor of Neuroscience at Harvard Medical School) If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire. I usually love books about how messed up the DSM, Big Pharma, and the social sciences are, but this book was terrible and here is why:

Twitter. It’s what’s happening / Twitter Twitter. It’s what’s happening / Twitter

I've read several books that incorporate or focus on the issues in psychiatry, but this is definitely among my favourites. The book is thought provoking, easy to read, and it challenges what you think we know about psychiatry. I wouldn't say I am convinced by everything in the book, but it certainly brought to light just how far removed psychological research is from the way it is practiced with patients and understood by the public. Polish rights in Hitler’s Last Plot : The 139 Men, Women, and Children Saved from Imminent Execution in the Final Days of the Third Reich by Jeremy Dronfield & Ian Sayer Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds. Exposé of the practices of contemporary psychiatry and its uncomfortable, perhaps even dangerous, relationship with pharmaceutical companies who profit from an increasingly medicated public. Using studies, interviews with experts and detailed analysis, the book explores how mental health outcomes have flatlined since the 1980s as our mental health sector has primarily developed over that period to serve economic outcomes, but at the expense of providing the health services people both need and want.Author James Davies obtained his PhD in medical and social anthropology from the University of Oxford. He is also a qualified psychotherapist (having worked in the NHS), and a senior lecturer in social anthropology and psychology at the University of Roehampton, London. He has delivered lectures at many universities, including Harvard, Brown, CUNY, Oxford and London, and has written articles about psychiatry for the New Scientist, Therapy Today and the Harvard Divinity Bulletin. On a personal level, I have to say that I encountered this particular issue in the early 1970s, where I was given the relevant medication for "anxiety" which made it almost impossible for me to function. The doctor who prescribed these, who I respected and still do, also said quite directly, in Scottish English "you don't like your job, do ya?" thus bringing that issue into full consciousness. When I left that employment to be a full-time student, I knew that I wouldn't need the medication anymore, and so it was. One of the points Davies makes is that the social aspects causing distress, hyperactivity etc are discounted by the medical model, even the neurological model and how research into genes is presented. For myself, the experience of being held in a psychiatric unit was in itself a source of distress, and just being given tablets to cure me was dehumanising. It ignored my very human experiences and suffering. Instead I felt like some sort of broken object, sat waiting to be fixed like a car that needs its spark plugs changing. It’s almost laughable now to think of those endless ward rounds when the psychiatrists would scratch their heads and wonder why my depression hadn’t lifted. But all they would consider doing would be to give me more tablets. I went years without being able to swim in the sea or listen to an orchestra, and I certainly never felt I was treated with respect. I recovered after many years, and countless tablets and treatments, when somebody decided to talk to me and listen.