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July 24, 2019 – Upbeat accounts of modern psychiatry, like A History of Psychiatry by Edward Shorter, present it as a story of good science triumphing over bad. Biological theories of and treatments for the brain, notably drugs like Thorazine, lithium, Valium and Prozac, displaced Freudian psychobabble and transformed psychiatry into a truly scientific discipline. This story is false, Harrington asserts. She writes: “Today one is hard-pressed to find anyone knowledgeable who believes that the so-called biological revolution of the 1980s made good on most or even any of its therapeutic and scientific promises.” Bio-psychiatry “overreached, overpromised, overdiagnosed, overmedicated and compromised its principles.”

Mind Fixers starts in the 19th century, when the insane were housed in asylums. As inmate populations rose, Emil Kraepelin and other European scientists sought to trace insanity to its biological roots. They were encouraged by the discovery that madness was often caused by syphilis…

Full Story @ ScientificAmerican.com