โFilled with insights into the social, historical, and economic forces responsible for the overmedicalization of human unhappiness and distress.โ โGeorge Graham,ย Metapsychology
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In this surprising book, Allan V. Horwitz argues that our current conceptions of mental illness as a disease fit only a small number of serious psychological conditions and that most conditions currently regarded as mental illness are cultural constructions, normal reactions to stressful social circumstances, or simply forms of deviant behavior.
โThought-provoking and important . . . Drawing on and consolidating the ideas of a range of authors, Horwitz challenges the existing use of the term mental illness and the psychiatric ideas and practices on which this usage is based . . . Horwitz enters this controversial territory with confidence, conviction, and clarity.โ โJoan Busfield,ย American Journal of Sociology
โHorwitz properly identifies the financial incentives that urge therapists and drug companies to proliferate psychiatric diagnostic categories. He correctly identifies the stranglehold that psychiatric diagnosis has on research funding in mental health. Above all, he provides a sorely needed counterpoint to the most strident advocates of disease-model psychiatry.โ โMark Sullivan,ย Journal of the American Medical Association
โHorwitz makes at least two major contributions to our understanding of mental disorders. First, he eloquently draws on evidence from the biological and social sciences to create a balanced, integrative approach to the study of mental disorders. Second, in accomplishing the first contribution, he provides a fascinating history of the study and treatment of mental disorders . . . from early asylum work to the rise of modern biological psychiatry.โโ Debra Umberson,ย Quarterly Review of Biology