Prozac. Paxil. Zoloft. Turn on your television and you are likely to see a commercial for one of the many selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) on the market. We hear a lot about them, but do we really understand how these drugs work and what risks are involved for anyone who uses them? Let Them Eat Prozac explores the history of SSRIs-from their early development to their latest marketing campaigns-and the controversies that surround them. Initially, they seemed like wonder drugs for those with mild to moderate depression. When Prozac was released in the late 1980s, David Healy was among the psychiatrists who prescribed it. But he soon observed that some of these patients became agitated and even attempted suicide. Could the new wonder drug actually be making patients worse? Healy draws on his own research and expertise to demonstrate the potential hazards associated with these drugs. He intersperses case histories with insider accounts of the research leading to the development and approval of SSRIs as a treatment for depression. Let Them Eat Prozac clearly demonstrates that the problems go much deeper than a side-effect of a particular drug. The pharmaceutical industry would like us to believe that SSRIs can safely treat depression, anxiety, and a host of other mental problems. But, as Let Them Eat Prozac reveals, this "cure" may be worse than the disease.

Psychiatric Drugs Explained offers a wealth of evidence-based information on psychiatric drugs in an easy-to-use format that can be quickly referenced in the clinical setting. Written by internationally recognised author Dr David Healy, the book provides a comprehensive review of drug effects, action and side-effects. There is an emphasis on the lived experience of patients, providing the reader with a sense of what the adverse effects of drugs might feel like to those who use them. A reader-friendly approach and clear layout, with information organised by disorder, make this popular title accessible and useful not only to nursing staff, but to all members of the multidisciplinary team. Quick reference guide suitable for all members of the multidisciplinary team Helpful boxes on user issues make potential complications easy to spot Distinctive, reader-friendly style helps the reader understand the benefits and impacts of psychotropic drugs New topics include management of dependence disorders, stimulants and drugs for children, cognitive impairment and sleep disorders The only book with detailed coverage of the sexual side effects of psychiatric drugs and the abusive prescribing of prescription drugs

Create! is a Design and Technology course for Key Stage 3. It provides all the material needed to deliver the demands of the new Key Stage 3 strategy. The course follows the QCA scheme and the materials support ICT requirements. A wide range of differentiated worksheets is available on a customisable CD-ROM. The student books contain clear links to the Key Stage 3 strategy and include design-and-make assignments, product evaluations and practical tasks; each spread opens with objectives to focus the lesson, and ends with a plenary to summarise and evaluate.

This text completes a trio of interview-based books about the process of therapeutic innovation in clinical psychiatry. David Healy's method is to interview key individuals involved in the discovery and deployment of drugs that have proved useful to psychiatry, and to draw them together using clinical discovery as the overall theme of his interviews. The accounts are historical, but are highly relevant to contemporary clinical psychiatrists, and they emphasize the importance of research and of the marketing strategies of pharmaceutical companies in formulating disease entities as well as treatments for them. The unifying theme of this third text is the role of receptors, and it includes coverage of international developments, including France, Eastern Europe and Japan. There is also a chapter on paediatric psychopharmacology.

Create! is a Design and Technology course for Key Stage 3. It provides all the material needed to deliver the demands of the new Key Stage 3 strategy. The course follows the QCA scheme and the materials support ICT requirements. A wide range of differentiated worksheets is available on a customisable CD-ROM. The student books contain clear links to the Key Stage 3 strategy and include design-and-make assignments, product evaluations and practical tasks; each spread opens with objectives to focus the lesson, and ends with a plenary to summarise and evaluate.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

aStirring firsthand account of the SSRI wars. . . . Healy is a distinguished research and practicing psychiatrist, university professor, frequent expert witness, former secretary of the British Association for Psychopharmacology, and author of three books in the field. Instead of shrinking from commercial involvement, he has consulted for, run clinical trials for, and at times even testified for most of the major drug firms. But when he pressed for answers to awkward questions about side effects, he personally felt Big Pharma's power to bring about a closing of ranks against troublemakers. That experience among others has left him well prepared to puncture any illusions about the companies' benevolence or scruples.a
--"New York Review of Books"

"A compelling story about mystery, deception, death, disappointment, vindication, and uncertainty."
--"The American Psychological Association"

"Healy confirms his status as one longtime thorn in the side of big drug companies, recounting how he was initially enthusiastic about SSRIs but eventually grew concerned about their side effects."
--"Psychology Today"

"Physicians should be aware of Let Them Eat Prozac."
--"JAMA"

"Let Them Eat Prozac is a double-pronged exploration, first of the SSRI drugs used to treat depression, and second of the drug industry."
--"Publishers Weekly"

"Ultimately, the book is about science, society and the power and misuse of commercial promotion. . . . His investigation is impressive."
--"Nature"

"This very important book will demonstrate beyond your worst dreams that the commercial needs of Big Pharma are the natural-born enemyof independent scientific research."
--John Le CarrA(c)

"Healy presents technical matters clearly. This book could not be more timely."
--"Foreword"

"Let Them Eat Prozac is an interesting history. It asks some stimulating and challenging questions, which are still in need of better and more constructive answers."
--"Journal of the American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry"

"In a flood of academic publications and talks, David Healy has issued harsh criticisms of both the pharmaceutical industry in general and the nearly $20-billion-dollar-a-year antidepressant industry in particular."
--"Boston Globe"

"Healy does raise some timely issues."
--"Psychiatric Services"

"Dr. Healy's tenacity in fighting for what he believes in is admirable."
--"E-Streams"

"[Healy is] the leading authority on the history of psychopharmacology."
--"Times Literary Supplement"

aAn alarming book. . . . The most disturbing part of the story Healy tells is not merely about the risks of SSRIs but about the efforts of the pharmaceutical industry to make sure those risks were not uncovered.a
--"Dissent"

"In his timely new book, Healy draws on his extensive experience in antidepressant studies and involvement in legal actions against drug manufacturers. . . . Healy has the advantage of access to internal pharmaceutical industry documents and makes a strong case."
--"Library Journal"

"The author is an excellent historian who offers a gripping interpretation of the role of the pharmaco-industrial complex in the introduction of SSRIs. His recommendation for a funded agency that would carefully evaluate the benefits and harms of marketed drugs is a superb idea andmuch needed."
--Jonathan Cole, Harvard Medical School

"Healy exposes the massive fraud and deception in the production and marketing of antidepressant drugs, the selevtive serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)."
--"Choice"

Prozac. Paxil. Zoloft. Turn on your television and you are likely to see a commercial for one of the many selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) on the market. We hear a lot about them, but do we really understand how these drugs work and what risks are involved for anyone who uses them?

Let Them Eat Prozac explores the history of SSRIs--from their early development to their latest marketing campaigns--and the controversies that surround them. Initially, they seemed like wonder drugs for those with mild to moderate depression. When Prozac was released in the late 1980s, David Healy was among the psychiatrists who prescribed it. But he soon observed that some of these patients became agitated and even attempted suicide. Could the new wonder drug actually be making patients worse?

Healy draws on his own research and expertise to demonstrate the potential hazards associated with these drugs. He intersperses case histories with insider accounts of the research leading to the development and approval of SSRIs as a treatment for depression. Let Them Eat Prozac clearly demonstrates that the problems go much deeper than a side-effect of a particular drug. The pharmaceutical industry would like us to believe that SSRIs can safely treat depression, anxiety, and a host of other mental problems. But, as Let Them Eat Prozac reveals, this "cure" may be worse than the disease.

David Healy follows his widely praised study, "The Antidepressant Era," with an even more ambitious and dramatic story: the discovery and development of antipsychotic medication. Healy argues that the discovery of chlorpromazine (more generally known as Thorazine) is as significant in the history of medicine as the discovery of penicillin, reminding readers of the worldwide prevalence of insanity within living memory.

But Healy tells not of the triumph of science but of a stream of fruitful accidents, of technological discovery leading neuroscientific research, of fierce professional competition and the backlash of the antipsychiatry movement of the 1960s. A chemical treatment was developed for one purpose, and as long as some theoretical rationale could be found, doctors administered it to the insane patients in their care to see if it would help. Sometimes it did, dramatically. Why these treatments worked, Healy argues provocatively, was, and often still is, a mystery. Nonetheless, such discoveries made and unmade academic reputations and inspired intense politicking for the Nobel Prize.

Once pharmaceutical companies recognized the commercial potential of antipsychotic medications, financial as well as clinical pressures drove the development of ever more aggressively marketed medications. With verve and immense learning, Healy tells a story with surprising implications in a book that will become the leading scholarly work on its compelling subject.

This provocative history of bipolar disorder illuminates how perceptions of illness, if not the illnesses themselves, are mutable over time. Beginning with the origins of the concept of mania--and the term "maniac"--in ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, renowned psychiatrist David Healy examines how concepts of mental afflictions evolved as scientific breakthroughs established connections between brain function and mental illness. Healy recounts the changing definitions of mania through the centuries, explores the effects of new terminology and growing public awareness of the disease on culture and society, and examines the rise of psychotropic treatments and pharmacological marketing over the past four decades. Along the way, Healy clears much of the confusion surrounding bipolar disorder even as he raises crucial questions about how, why, and by whom the disease is diagnosed.

Drawing heavily on primary sources and supplemented with interviews and insight gained over Healy's long career, this lucid and engaging overview of mania sheds new light on one of humankind's most vexing ailments.

When we stop at the pharmacy to pick up our Prozac, are we simply buying a drug? Or are we buying into a disease as well? The first complete account of the phenomenon of antidepressants, this authoritative, highly readable book relates how depression, a disease only recently deemed too rare to merit study, has become one of the most common disorders of our day--and a booming business to boot.

"The Antidepressant Era" chronicles the history of psychopharmacology from its inception with the discovery of chlorpromazine in 1951 to current battles over whether these powerful chemical compounds should replace psychotherapy. An expert in both the history and the science of neurochemistry and psychopharmacology, David Healy offers a close-up perspective on early research and clinical trials, the stumbling and successes that have made Prozac and Zoloft household names. The complex story he tells, against a backdrop of changing ideas about medicine, details the origins of the pharmaceutical industry, the pressures for regulation of drug companies, and the emergence of the idea of a depressive disease. This historical and neurochemical analysis leads to a clear look at what antidepressants reveal about both the workings of the brain and the sociology of drug marketing.

Most arresting is Healy's insight into the marketing of antidepressants and the medicalization of the neuroses. Demonstrating that pharmaceutical companies are as much in the business of selling psychiatric diagnoses as of selling psychotropic drugs, he raises disturbing questions about how much of medical science is governed by financial interest.

This searing indictment, David HealyOCOs most comprehensive and forceful argument against the pharmaceuticalization of medicine, tackles problems in health care that are leading to a growing number of deaths and disabilities. Healy, who was the first to draw attention to the now well-publicized suicide-inducing side effects of many anti-depressants, attributes our current state of affairs to three key factors: product rather than process patents on drugs, the classification of certain drugs as prescription-only, and industry-controlled drug trials. These developments have tied the survival of pharmaceutical companies to the development of blockbuster drugs, so that they must overhype benefits and deny real hazards. Healy further explains why these trends have basically ended the possibility of universal health care in the United States and elsewhere around the world. He concludes with suggestions for reform of our currently corrupted evidence-based medical system.

It is estimated that forty-five to fifty percent of all Americans will suffer a mental disorder at some time during their lives. Increasingly, the treatment for these disorders is management with one or more psychiatric drugs, often prescribed by general practitioners. In Pillaged Ronald William Maris evaluates the psychiatric medications commonly used to treat several major types of psychiatric disorders - including depression and mood disorders, bipolar disorders, anxiety disorders, and psychotic disorders - asking "do they work as advertised?" and, more importantly, "are they safe?" Answers to these questions are more ambiguous than we might think, Maris explains, because drug manufacturers tend to minimize the adverse effects of their products. Furthermore, the underlying neurobiological theories of how psychiatric drugs work are complex, poorly understood, and often conflicting. Still Americans spend tens of billions of dollars a year on antidepressants and antipsychotics alone. While Maris questions the rampant prescribing of psychiatric medications especially in young people, Pillaged does not suggest that anyone cavalierly discontinue potentially beneficial psychiatric medications without the advice of a qualified mental health professional. The book acknowledges that psychiatric medications are often necessary in treating some psychiatric conditions, but it reminds readers of medication's potential for degrading one's quality of life, contributing to self-destructive behaviors, and even leading to death in a vulnerable minority of patients. Maris advocates an open and honest discussion of data on psychiatric drugs, their effects, and their dangers, and he reminds readers of available alternative, nondrug treatments for psychiatric disorders. By reviewing the history and effects of medications for mental disorders, Maris hopes to educate health care consumers and prescribers to make careful, informed decisions about the treatment of psychiatric disorders.

This is volume 4 of the series The History of Psychopharmacology and the CINP, As Told in Autobiography. The series covers in autobiographical accounts the fifty years that laid the foundation of neuropsychopharmacology In this fourth volume the story of the 1990s is complemented by reflections on twentieth-century psychopharmacology by the few of those who actively participated throughout the development of the field. The series represents the first source book for a field that has been virtually undocumented. Many of the stories have relevance to current research.

Volume 1 of the series The History of Psychopharmacology and the CINP, As Told in Autobiography. It covers the rise of psychopharmacology and traces the history of the new field and of the CINP to about 1970. This is a source book, based on a collection of memoirs of those who were there.

This is volume 5 of the series The History of Psychopharmacology and the CINP, As Told in Autobiography. It is a comprehensive cumulative index, and an appendix which includes a biographic register of all the contributors to the four main volumes.

This is volume 2 of the series The History of Psychopharmacology and the CINP, As Told in Autobiography. It covers the triumph of psychopharmacology in the 1970s and traces the story of the CINP during that period. This is a source book, based on a collection of memoirs of those who were there

This is volume 3 of the series The History of Psychopharmacology and the CINP, As Told in Autobiography. It covers the transformation of psychopharmacology to neuropsychopharacology in the 1980s and traces the story of the CINP during that period. This is a source book, based on a collection of memoirs of those who were there.

This searing indictment, David Healy's most comprehensive and forceful argument against the pharmaceuticalization of medicine, tackles problems in health care that are leading to a growing number of deaths and disabilities. Healy, who was the first to draw attention to the now well-publicized suicide-inducing side effects of many anti-depressants, attributes our current state of affairs to three. Key factors: product rather than process patents on drugs, the classification of certain drugs as prescription-only, and industry-controlled drug trials. These developments have tied the survival of pharmaceutical companies to the development of blockbuster drugs, so that they must overhype benefits and deny real hazards. Healy further explains why these trends have basically ended the possibility of universal health care in the United States and elsewhere around the world. He concludes with suggestions for reform of our currently corrupted evidence-based medical system.

It is estimated that forty-five to fifty percent of all Americans will suffer a mental disorder at some time during their lives. Increasingly, the treatment for these disorders is management with one or more psychiatric drugs, often prescribed by general practitioners. In Pillaged Ronald William Maris evaluates the psychiatric medications commonly used to treat several major types of psychiatric disorders - including depression and mood disorders, bipolar disorders, anxiety disorders, and psychotic disorders - asking "do they work as advertised?" and, more importantly, "are they safe?" Answers to these questions are more ambiguous than we might think, Maris explains, because drug manufacturers tend to minimize the adverse effects of their products. Furthermore, the underlying neurobiological theories of how psychiatric drugs work are complex, poorly understood, and often conflicting. Still Americans spend tens of billions of dollars a year on antidepressants and antipsychotics alone. While Maris questions the rampant prescribing of psychiatric medications especially in young people, Pillaged does not suggest that anyone cavalierly discontinue potentially beneficial psychiatric medications without the advice of a qualified mental health professional. The book acknowledges that psychiatric medications are often necessary in treating some psychiatric conditions, but it reminds readers of medication's potential for degrading one's quality of life, contributing to self-destructive behaviors, and even leading to death in a vulnerable minority of patients. Maris advocates an open and honest discussion of data on psychiatric drugs, their effects, and their dangers, and he reminds readers of available alternative, nondrug treatments for psychiatric disorders. By reviewing the history and effects of medications for mental disorders, Maris hopes to educate health care consumers and prescribers to make careful, informed decisions about the treatment of psychiatric disorders.

Shock therapy is making a comeback today in the treatment of serious mental illness. Despite its reemergence as a safe and effective psychiatric tool, however, it continues to be shrouded by a longstanding negative public image, not least due to films such as the classic "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, " where the inmate of a psychiatric clinic (played by Jack Nicholson) is subjected to electro-shock to curb his rebellious behavior. Beyond its vilification in popular culture, the stereotype of convulsive therapy as a dangerous and inhumane practice is fuelled by professional posturing and public misinformation. Electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, has in the last thirty years been considered a method of last resort in the treatment of debilitating depression, suicidal ideation, and other forms of mental illness. Yet, ironically, its effectiveness in treating these patients would suggest it as a frontline therapy, bringing relief from acute symptoms and saving lives.
In this book, Edward Shorter and David Healy trace the controversial history of ECT and other "shock" therapies. Drawing on case studies, public debates, extensive interviews, and archival research, the authors expose the myths about ECT that have proliferated over the years. By showing ECT's often life-saving results, Shorter and Healy endorse a point of view that is hotly contested in professional circles and in public debates, but for the nearly half of all clinically depressed patients who do not respond to drugs, this book brings much needed hope.