`The summaries of evidence have provided ready-made challenges to previously unquestioned medical options ... the book provides a challenging update on the nature of scientific inquiry.' - British Journal of Clinical Psychology Despite nearly one hundred years of research, very little progress has been achieved in the understanding of schizophrenic behaviour. There remains considerable uncertainty even about the fundamental features of the hypothesised illness. Reconstructing Schizophrenia subjects the difficult concept of schizophrenia to rigorous scientific, historical and sociological scrutiny. They ask why a biological defect has been assumed in the absence of hard evidence and look at what can be done psychologically to alleviate schizophrenic symptoms. Finally, they explore what new models and research strategies are required in order to understand schizophrenic behaviour. The result is a book that provides a distinctive and critical perspective on modern psychiatric theories and which demonstrates the severe limitations of an exclusively medical approach to understanding madness.

Despite nearly one hundred years of research, very little progress has been achieved in the understanding of schizophrenic behavior. Although it is widely believed that schizophrenic symptoms reflect an underlying biological disorder, the evidence for such a disorder remains disputed and many different biological defects have been implicated. There remains considerable uncertainty even about the fundamental features of the hypothesized illness.
"Reconstructing Schizophrenia" subjects the difficult concept of schizophrenia to rigorous scientific, historical, and sociological scrutiny. The contributors, who are all psychologists with considerable research and clinical experience in the field of adult psychopathology, examine the concept of schizophrenia, ask why a biological defect has been assumed in the absence of hard evidence and look at what can be done psychologically to alleviate schizophrenic symptoms. Finally, they explore what new models and researchstrategies are required in order to understand schizophrenic behavior. The result is a book that provides a distinctive and critical perspective on modern psychiatric theories and which demonstrates the severe limitations of an exclusively medical approach to understanding madness.

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.

THIS BOOK WILL EXPLAIN WHAT MADNESS IS, TO SHOW THAT IT CAN BE UNDERSTOOD IN PSYCHOLOGICAL TERMS, AND THAT BY STUDYING IT WE CAN LEARN IMPORTANT INSIGHTS ABOUT THE NORMAL MIND. THE BOOK WILL ARGUE THAT TRADITIONAL APPROACHES TO MADNESS MUST BE ABANDONED IN FAVOUR OF A NEW APPROACH WHICH IS MORE CONSISTENT WITH THAT WE NOW KNOW ABOUT THE HUMAN MIND. OVER THE LAST CENTURY OR SO IT HAS BECOME SO COMMONPLACE TO REGARD MADNESS SIMPLY AS A MEDICAL CONDITION THAT IT HAS BECOME DIFFICULT TO THINK OF IT IN ANY OTHER WAY. BENTALL ARGUES INSTEAD THAT DELUSIONS, HALLUCINATIONS AND OTHER UNUSUAL BEHAVIOURS ARE BEST UNDERSTOOD PSYCHOLOGICALLY, AND THAT SUCH EXPERIENCES FOR THE MOST PART REPRESENT EXAGGERATIONS OF MENTAL FOIBLES TO WHICH WE ARE ALL PRONE.

Why is the Western world's treatment of mental illness so flawed? Who really benefits from psychiatry? And why would a patient in Nigeria have a much greater chance of recovery than one in the UK? In Doctoring the Mind, leading clinical psychologist Richard Bentall reveals the shocking truths behind the system of mental health care in the West. With a heavy dependence on pills and the profit they bring, psychiatry has been relying on myths and misunderstandings of madness for too long, and builds on methods which can often hinder rather than help the patient. Bentall argues passionately for a new future of mental health, one that considers the patient as an individual and redefines our understanding and treatment of madness for the twenty-first century.