Doctoring The Mind

Download or read book Doctoring the Mind written by Richard P Bentall and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2009-06-25 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Towards the end of the twentieth century, the solution to mental illness seemed to be found. It lay in biological solutions, focusing on mental illness as a problem of the brain, to be managed or improved through drugs. We entered the 'Prozac Age' and believed we had moved on definitively from the time of frontal lobotomies to an age of good and successful mental healthcare. Biological psychiatry had triumphed. Except maybe it hadn't. Starting with surprising evidence from the World Health Organisation that suggests people recover better from mental illness in a developing country than in the first world, Doctoring the Mind asks the question: how good are our mental health services, really? Richard Bentall picks apart the science that underlies current psychiatric practice across the US and UK. Arguing passionately for a future of mental health treatment that focuses as much on patients as individuals as on the brain itself, this is a book set to redefine our understanding of the treatment of madness in the twenty-first century.

Download or read book Doctoring the Mind written by Richard P. Bentall and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2009-09-30 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Toward the end of the twentieth century, the solution to mental illness seemed to be found. It lay in biological solutions, focusing on mental illness as a problem of the brain, to be managed or improved through drugs. We entered the "Prozac Age" and believed we had moved far beyond the time of frontal lobotomies to an age of good and successful mental healthcare. Biological psychiatry had triumphed. Except maybe it hadn’t. Starting with surprising evidence from the World Health Organization that suggests that people recover better from mental illness in a developing country than in the first world, Doctoring the Mind asks the question: how good are our mental healthcare services, really? Richard P. Bentall picks apart the science that underlies our current psychiatric practice. He puts the patient back at the heart of treatment for mental illness, making the case that a good relationship between patients and their doctors is the most important indicator of whether someone will recover. Arguing passionately for a future of mental health treatment that focuses as much on patients as individuals as on the brain itself, this is a book set to redefine our understanding of the treatment of madness in the twenty-first century.

Download or read book Undertaker of the Mind written by Jonathan Andrews and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2001-11-27 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As visiting physician to Bethlem Hospital, the archetypal "Bedlam" and Britain's first and (for hundreds of years) only public institution for the insane, Dr. John Monro (1715–1791) was a celebrity in his own day. Jonathan Andrews and Andrew Scull call him a "connoisseur of insanity, this high priest of the trade in lunacy." Although the basics of his life and career are well known, this study is the first to explore in depth Monro's colorful and contentious milieu. Mad-doctoring grew into a recognized, if not entirely respectable, profession during the eighteenth century, and besides being affiliated with public hospitals, Monro and other mad-doctors became entrepreneurs and owners of private madhouses and were consulted by the rich and famous. Monro's close social connections with members of the aristocracy and gentry, as well as with medical professionals, politicians, and divines, guaranteed him a significant place in the social, political, cultural, and intellectual worlds of his time. Andrews and Scull draw on an astonishing array of visual materials and verbal sources that include the diaries, family papers, and correspondence of some of England's wealthiest and best-connected citizens. The book is also distinctive in the coverage it affords to individual case histories of Monro's patients, including such prominent contemporary figures as the Earls Ferrers and Orford, the religious "enthusiast" Alexander Cruden, and the "mad" King George III, as well as his crazy would-be assassin, Margaret Nicholson. What the authors make clear is that Monro, a serious physician neither reactionary nor enlightened in his methods, was the outright epitome of the mad-trade as it existed then, esteemed in some quarters and ridiculed in others. The fifty illustrations, expertly annotated and integrated with the text, will be a revelation to many readers.

Download or read book Madness Explained written by Richard P Bentall and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2003-06-05 with total page 557 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revised edition of Madness Explained, Richard Bentall's groundbreaking classic on mental illness In Madness Explained, leading clinical psychologist Richard Bentall shatters the modern myths that surround psychosis. Is madness purely a medical condition that can be treated with drugs? Is there a clear dividing line between who is sane and who is insane? For this revised edition, he adds new material drawing on the recent advances in molecular genetics, new studies of the role of environment in psychosis, and important discoveries on early symptoms preceding illness, among other important developments in our understanding. 'Madness Explained is a substantial, yet highly accessible work. Full of insight and humanity, it deserves a wide readership.' Sunday Times 'Will give readers a glimpse both of answers to their own problems, and to questions about how the mind works' Independent Magazine Richard P. Bentall holds a Chair in Experimental Clinical Psychology at the University of Manchester. In 1989 he received the British Psychological Society's May Davidson Award for his contribution to the field of Clinical Psychology.

Download or read book Proper Doctoring written by David Mendel and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2013-09-24 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “People come to us for help. They come for health and strength.” With these simple words David Mendel begins Proper Doctoring, a book about what it means (and takes) to be a good doctor, and for that reason very much a book for patients as well as doctors—which is to say a book for everyone. In crisp, clear prose, he introduces readers to the craft of medicine and shows how to practice it. Discussing matters ranging from the most basic—how doctors should dress and how they should speak to patients—to the taking of medical histories, the etiquette of examinations, and the difficulties of diagnosis, Mendel moves on to consider how the doctor can best serve patients who suffer from prolonged illness or face death. Throughout he keeps in sight the fundamental moral fact that the relationship between doctor and patient is a human one before it is a professional one. As he writes with characteristic concision, “The trained and experienced doctor puts himself, or his nearest and dearest, in the patient’s position, and asks himself what he would do if he were advising himself or his family. No other advice is acceptable; no other is justifiable.” Proper Doctoring is a book that is admirably direct, as well as wise, witty, deeply humane, and, frankly, indispensable.

Download or read book Mind Over Mind written by Chris Berdik and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-09-24 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How our fast-forward minds make something out of nothing We all know expectations matter—in school, in sports, in the stock market. From a healing placebo to a run on the bank, hints of their self-fulfilling potential have been observed for years. But we’ve never fully understood why. Journalist Chris Berdik offers a captivating look at the frontiers of expectations research, revealing how our assumptions bend reality. We learn how placebo calories can fill us up, how fake surgery can sometimes work better than real surgery, and how imaginary power can be corrupting. Mind Over Mind is a journey into the most exciting area of brain research today.

Download or read book Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness written by Anne Harrington and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2019-04-16 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Superb… a nuanced account of biological psychiatry.” —Richard J. McNally In Mind Fixers, “the preeminent historian of neuroscience” (Science magazine) Anne Harrington explores psychiatry’s repeatedly frustrated efforts to understand mental disorder. She shows that psychiatry’s waxing and waning theories have been shaped not just by developments in the clinic and lab, but also by a surprising range of social factors. Mind Fixers recounts the past and present struggle to make mental illness a biological problem in order to lay the groundwork for creating a better future.