The book features a radical perspective on psychiatry and the “mental health system” informed by an antipsychiatry perspective and anti-oppression analysis. In the Introduction, antipsychiatry is defined as active and radical resistance to psychiatry - antipsychiatry is not an intellectual or “academic exercise.” The book deconstructs psychiatry as a social control system.. As social control, psychiatry is specifically deconstructed as inherently coercive and based on force, fear and fraud...

'The so-called war on drugs has been a colossal failure, and this book offers further proof that we must treat drug use as a public health issue, not as a crime' Sir Richard BransonThis landmark book, from Matt Noffs and his team at the Noffs Foundation, is a much-needed voice of reason in the national conversation around the drug ice. What is ice? What does it do to the brain? What can we learn from previous drug policies about managing the current crisis? And what are the practic...

Having a good death is our final human right, argues Sandra Martin in this updated and expanded version of her bestselling and award-winning social history of the right to die movement in Canada and around the world.Winner of the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, finalist for both the Donner Prize in Public Policy and the Dafoe Prize for History, A Good Death has a new chapter on Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying Law. The law allows mentally competent adults, who are s...

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERMore people than ever before see themselves as addicted to, or recovering from, addiction, whether it be alcohol or drugs, prescription meds, sex, gambling, porn, or the internet. But despite the unprecedented attention, our understanding of addiction is trapped in unfounded 20th century ideas, addiction as a crime or as brain disease, and in equally outdated treatment.Challenging both the idea of the addict's "broken brain" and t...

This provocative account of our obsession with neuroscience brilliantly illuminates what contemporary neuroscience and brain imaging can and cannot tell us about ourselves, providing a much-needed reminder about the many factors that make us who we are.What can't neuroscience tell us about ourselves? Since fMRI -- functional magnetic resonance imaging -- was introduced in the early 1990s, brain scans have been used to help politicians understand and manipulate vote...

Kitty Dukakis has battled debilitating depression for more than twenty years. Coupled with drug and alcohol addictions that both hid and fueled her suffering, Kitty's despair was overwhelming. She tried every medication and treatment available; none worked for long. It wasn't until she tried electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, that she could reclaim her life. Kitty's dramatic first-person account of how ECT keeps her illness at bay is half the story of Shock. The other half, by award winnin...

Anxious Americans have increasingly pursued peace of mind through pills and prescriptions. In 2006, the National Institute of Mental Health estimated that 40 million adult Americans suffer from an anxiety disorder in any given year: more than double the number thought to have such a disorder in 2001. Anti-anxiety drugs are a billion-dollar business. Yet as recently as 1955, when the first tranquilizer -- Miltown -- went on the market, pharmaceutical executives worried that there wouldn't't...

American doctors dispense approximately 230 million antidepressant prescriptions every year, more than any other class of medication. Charles Barberexplores this disturbing phenomenon, examining the ways in which pharmaceutical companies first create the need for a drug and then rush to fill it. Most importantly, he convincingly argues that, without an industry to promote them, non-pharmaceutical approaches are tragically overlooked in favor of an instant cure for all emotional difficultie...

In her provocative new book, New York Times-bestselling author Judith Warner explores the storm of debate over whether we are overdiagnosing and overmedicating our children who have "issues."In Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, Judith Warner explained what's gone wrong with the culture of parenting, and her conclusions sparked a national debate on how women and society view motherhood. Her new book, We've Got Issues: Children ...

Antipsychotic medications are sometimes imposed on psychiatric patients deemed dangerous to themselves and others. This is based on the assumption that treatment is safe and effective, and that recovery depends on biological adjustment. Under new laws, patients can be required to remain on these medications after leaving hospitals. However, survivors attest that forced treatment used as a restraint can feel like torture, while the consequences of withdrawal can also be severe.A bra...

When is it okay for a person to kill themself? How have ideas about this changed over time, and how do they differ across cultures? How do Ireland's suicide rates, especially among its young men, compare to rates in other countries in Europe and beyond? Are we obsessed today with the idea of suicide? Is it possible to prevent suicide - and, if so, how? Should we try to prevent all suicides, or are there some that we should allow, regulate, even assist? Might some suicides be rational? How ...

This is the story of one of the most far-reaching human endeavors in history: the quest for mental well-being. From its origins in the eighteenth century to its wide scope in the early twenty-first, this search for emotional health and welfare has cost billions. In the name of mental health, millions around the world have been tranquilized, institutionalized, psycho-analyzed, sterilized, lobotomized and even euthanized. Yet at the dawn of the new millennium, reported rates of depression an...