I just want to play. I enjoy being out there in the week... but the fun part for me is being out there on Saturday with the boys." c) The training of future psychiatrists must install greater awareness of psychiatry's scientific failings and current excesses as well as how to manage patients outside the medical model. There is no point piling up more quotations. By now you get the picture: the public defections continue to mount because, after nearly 50 years of investigation into the chemical imbalance theory, there is not one piece of convincing evidence that the theory is actually correct..."

Sybil Exposed by Debbie Nathan (excellent takedown of fads in psychiatry/ how therapy can make things worse) Who bites the hand that feeds? There is a huge cover-up, smoke and mirrors going on in the world of funding ‘research’ into psychiatric medicine whether in academic institutions, or with clinicians. And, gentle reader, there is even less transparency over this in the UK than there is in the States, where under the Obama administration, spearheaded by a particularly truth-and-justice campaigning Senator, Senator Grassley, some efforts to bring the Pharma hyena under the spotlight are beginning to bear fruit. But not here, where there is murk a plenty. Perhaps though, the fact that fully 56% of the panel member luminaries involved in writing the DSM-IV bible had 1 or more financial associations with the pharmaceutical industry, should begin to rip the wool from over our eyes. And, for those writing/creating the diagnostic categories, which would or course be primarily treated by pharmaceuticals, - 88% of DSM-IV panel members had drug company financial ties.from Big Pharma. And things don’t have appeared to have changed for the better in terms of ‘arms length’ involvement with the writing of the now current DSM-V. 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) Humming can help relax the mind and body by reducing stress levels and lowering our heart rate and blood pressure.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: She is the second Channel 7 personality to endure a relationship breakup following Chris Bath's split from her partner Denis Carahan. She is now dating newsreader Jim Wilson. As a scientific venture, the theory that low serotonin causes depression appears to be on the verge of collapse. This is as it should be; the nature of science is ultimately to be selfcorrecting. 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. First of all, I do agree that overdiagnosing and overmedicalisation are problems that should be taken into account. However, I really didn't like the extreme approach in this book, as well as the awfully subjective examples (like interviews, "my neighbor once said" or "this person thinks that his son was misdiagnosed" type of shit) and far-fetched conclusions. I don't think there's a point in blaming the DSM and its creators for causing a wave of overdiagnosing - it's the specialists who are not doing their job correctly or considering the context of problems) and the problem lies with the education and moral principles and the system. The whole part where the author blames the DSM is just so unnecessary - the DSM is already out there and I still think it's better than nothing - the probability of misdiagnosing would be a lot greater if not for the DSM.

I am not saying (nor is Davies) that all these senior clinicians and medical academicians are corrupt, merely that neutrality becomes hard to achieve when your income is dependent on a particular company who are hoping your findings will support the excellence of their product, and even to demonstrate a need for their product I don't really think about it too much. I'm just concerned with getting a few games under my belt and getting fit," he said. Davies also writes about the conflicts of interest that have become endemic to the field recently. Namely, a large number of medical professionals, universities, and medical associations collect bountiful fees from large pharmaceutical companies; in the form of pro-drug speaking fees, donations, consultancy work, and other assorted compensations and incentives for prescribing and advocating for these controversial medications. First of all, let me say that I completely agree that overmedicalisation is a big problem. Okay, now for the real review.

BookBliss

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) 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. A particularly interesting chapter is about a young psychiatrist who is targeted by a drug company to be trained and spruik their wares and also an exposition of the relevant sales strategies and methods. One might say that these are legitimate methods designed to sell a product (although I have my doubts) without dealing with whether they actually work. The theory is that the psychiatric illness is caused by some sort of imbalance in brain chemistry and the drugs will correct this imbalance. However, the imbalance has never been shown to exist. Even in the case of depression the evidence is pretty clear ...as the following citation indicates: I will accept his grim indictment of the current state of the pharmaceutical industry (indeed, many reviewers are mentioning Ben Goldacre who has pointed this all out before)

James has come up with a series of small changes that people can make to their daily lives (Image: Supplied)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. 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. I've read a bit around this topic over many years and wondered at first whether I really needed to have this book to read, in that the general issues: credibility of the DSM, big pharma, the increasing use of medication for dealing with the expanding label of depression and so on, are fairly well established, not that there's been much change as a response to the evidence and perspectives presented. Kruger went to great lengths to keep their January 2003 wedding secret but she later sold the story to a woman's magazine.