The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth

The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth
ISBN-10
0465021042
ISBN-13
9780465021048
Category
Psychology
Pages
240
Language
English
Published
2010-01-26
Publisher
Basic Books
Author
Irving Kirsch

Description

Do antidepressants work? Of course—everyone knows it. Like his colleagues, Irving Kirsch, a researcher and clinical psychologist, for years referred patients to psychiatrists to have their depression treated with drugs before deciding to investigate for himself just how effective the drugs actually were. Over the course of the past fifteen years, however, Kirsch's research—a thorough analysis of decades of Food and Drug Administration data—has demonstrated that what everyone knew about antidepressants was wrong. Instead of treating depression with drugs, we've been treating it with suggestion. The Emperor's New Drugs makes an overwhelming case that what had seemed a cornerstone of psychiatric treatment is little more than a faulty consensus. But Kirsch does more than just criticize: he offers a path society can follow so that we stop popping pills and start proper treatment for depression.

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