The Creation of Psychopharmacology
The standard historical view of psychiatry claims that the invention of chlorpromazine (a.k.a. Thorazine) in 1952 ushered in biologically based "scientific" psychiatry. Healy (The Antidepressant Era) claims that earlier psychiatry was also scientifically based and had some notable successes, such as the treatment of catatonia with shock therapy. Healy's second theme is that because the success of psychiatric drugs, the choice of treatment options is largely dependent on the financial preferences of the pharmaceutical industry. For example, the author argues that "randomized controlled trials" of drugs are favored by the pharmaceutical industry because they allow products to be marketed to a wide audience, but what is desperately needed is more research on the effects of medications on more specific types of patients. While this theme has certainly been sounded before (T.R. Luhrmann's Of Two Minds is an accessible discussion of the pitfalls of drug-based psychiatry), the detailed history of the development of psychiatric drugs and the "culture" surrounding them makes this book unique. For academic libraries. Mary Ann Hughes, Neill P.L., Pullman, WACopyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.