Review by Choice Review
In this engaging exploratory narrative, Harrington (history of science, Harvard) identifies the multiple complex issues inherent in defining psychiatry in biomedical terms. In the book's three sections--"Doctor Stories," "Disease Stories," and "Unfinished Stories"--the author unfolds the history of attempting to care for the mentally ill through a rigid medical model that served research at the expense of suffering patients. Harrington's investigation into early research on what is now known as PTSD as an infectious disease that could be treated with discipline and drill gave way to the eventual identification of those symptoms as syphilis. This provided an apophenic anchor instilling hope in the possibility of attaching mental illness to biological causes. Harrington dives into specific diagnoses, including schizophrenia, depression, and manic depression (as bipolar disorder was originally known), providing an in-depth review of the historical developments that impacted the ability to treat the symptoms that debilitated patients. The author interweaves into the discussion the interrelated topics of gender and gender identity, the DSM, pharmaceuticals, politics, the spectrum continuum nature of mental illness, and the rights of those with mental illness, in so doing adding depth, clarity, and humanity to discussion of these complex issues. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers. --Brenda L. Marshall, William Paterson University of New Jersey
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
When Shekhar Saxena, director of the World Health Organization's mental health unit, was asked where he'd prefer to be if he were diagnosed with schizophrenia, he said a city in Ethiopia or Sri Lanka, rather than New York or London. In the developing world, he explained, he had the potential to find a niche for himself as a productive, if eccentric, member of a community, whereas in the modern, Western cities he was far more apt to end up stigmatized and on the margins of society. ft is a damning insight into psychiatry's current state of affairs and one reflected time and again in Harrington's comprehensive history of our search for a biological basis of mental illness, ft is a tale without a happy ending. The "biological revolution" in which scientists threw away Lreudian teachings in search of the underlying biology of disease is, according to Harrington, an era of psychiatry that has overreached, overpromised and overdiagnosed, ft is morally compromised, has been tainted by racism, sexism and money-grabbing, and has left too many people shamefully underserved. "Mind Lixers" is a shot at telling a "better, more honest" story of psychiatry's troubled past in order to help us learn from our mistakes, ft is a laudable venture, in which Harrington's intellectual precision and exacting research cannot be faulted. Yet in its dogmatic approach, her tale lacks a certain empathy, which can make it difficult for the reader to maintain the passion for the subject that Harrington herself clearly possesses. The change Harrington envisions for psychiatry would ultimately involve doctors concentrating on the most severe forms of mental illness and handing back power to nonmedical workers - counselors, social service providers - to give patients a broader range of care, ft's a bold plea, one that would no doubt improve the health care system. But based on her own reflections about the past, it seems likely to fall on deaf ears.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 21, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
In this erudite work, Harrington explores the history of psychiatry from the French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot to the Swiss American neurologist Adolf Meyer to Sigmund Freud and up to the present day. Specifically, she examines the 180-degree turnaround in understanding the biological basis for mental illness with an emphasis on American psychiatry, which, unfortunately, she adds, contains elements of institutionalized racism, gender bias, and classism (such as the sterilization of the so-called feeble-minded). What changed in the field, she suggests, occurred in the 1970s, when a number of rebels and critics challenged the Freudian old guard. While addressing schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar disorder, Harrington explores the unraveling of biological psychiatry of the 1990s, as evidenced by the profession's loss of faith in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), the bible of psychiatry. She also discusses, among many other topics, deinstitutionalization, the social theories of madness, the discovery of the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine, the invention of antidepressants, and the rise of Big Pharma. A fascinating and wide-ranging unpacking of the field.--June Sawyers Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Harrington (Reenchanted Science), a Harvard science history professor, lucidly and accessibly chronicles the search for mental illness's elusive causes. The book's three parts make up a "deep dive into our long effort to understand the biological basis of mental illness." Part one examines the historical figures in this effort, such as German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin and Swiss neurologist Adolf Meyer; part two covers investigations into the possible biological basis of schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar disorder; and part three focuses on historic errors that led to the current stalemate between pharmaceutical proponents and supporters of nonmedical, nondrug practices. Along the way, Harrington delves into the drug industry's murkier corners, including how pharmaceutical executives in the 1990s tried to maximize the profitability of antipsychotics by marketing them to people without schizophrenia, and fascinatingly explores historic and mostly discarded treatments such as lobotomy, once touted as "soul surgery" by a credulous media. She concludes by offering a way forward for psychiatry, declaring that the field must "resist self-serving declarations of imminent breakthroughs and revolutions," "make a virtue of modesty," and share more of its power over patient treatment-such as to determine prescriptions-with nonmedical mental health professionals. Anyone interested in mental health care's history and future will appreciate this informative and rewarding survey. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A thorough and well-researched account of the ongoing attempts to find biological bases for mental illness.In a surprisingly suspenseful narrative, Harrington (History of Science/Harvard Univ.; The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine, 2008, etc.) traces the conflict between those who believed it would be possible to find biological causes and cures for mental illness and those who suspected that the current scientific tools were too crude to do so and that such illness could only be treated with a series of dialogues between patient and physician. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the author suggests, the biologists had a few victories, such as making the connection between the physical effects of syphilis and its effect on the mind, but they focused primarily on unproductive autopsies of the brains of patients. Meanwhile, the newly popular Freudians won the approval of patients with less severe mental illnesses as well as those attempting to ameliorate their symptoms. Later in the 20th century, as new drugs and techniques such as electroconvulsive therapy were discovered and heavily marketed, the balance swung temporarily toward the biologistsat least until it became clear that these drugs and techniques didn't produce the miracles their proponents initially claimed. After considering this struggle as a whole, Harrington moves on to examining it in the context of several specific forms of mental illness, including schizophrenia, depression, and manic depression. Beneath the author's firm, stately prose, which never becomes alarmist or provocative, lies a bleak assessment of the mental health profession. Its practitioners come across as hampered by the current, insufficient state of understanding of how the mind functions and malfunctions as well as prompted by jealousy, fear, greed, and a desire to one-up those they see as their competitors. Can psychiatry, Harrington asks, "acknowledge and firmly turn away from its ethical lapsesand especially the willingness of so many of its practitioners in recent decades to follow the money instead of the suffering?"A measured, insightful survey of the limits of contemporary treatment for mental illness. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
