Voluntary Madness :: a New Gonzo Journalist's Book About Madness

Sounds fascinating and confirms my opinion that modern psychiatry pretty much has no idea what it's doing re: ameliorating depression.

clipped from www.nytimes.com At the unfortunate cost of narrative suspense, Vincent discloses her biases early: like a growing number of Americans, she’s fairly certain that America’s love affair with modern-day psychiatry is nothing less than a subprime crisis, with the F.D.A., the DSM, Big Pharma and your harried family doctor in on the scam. She’ll even go so far as to describe depression as “bratty rebellion,” many diagnoses as “a guess” and most psychiatric drugs as “of dubious or at best limited efficacy and usually unfathomed toxicity.” It is astounding how little it takes for Vincent to begin to recover at her last stop, a cognitive-behavioralist facility advertised for patients in mental distress but in practice a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center — a little bit of sympathy, a movement class, a therapist who finally zeroes in on the anger and breaks down the emotions around it. Sit with your anger, and its handmaiden, shame. Frederick Broden