The Psychiatrist And Other Stories

“Gary Greenberg has become the Dante of our psychiatric age, and the DSM-5 is his Inferno.” —Errol Morris Since its debut in 1952, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has set down the “official” view on what constitutes mental illness. Homosexuality, for instance, was a mental illness until 1973. Each revision has created controversy, but the DSM-5 has taken fire for encouraging doctors to diagnose more illnesses—and to prescribe sometimes unnecessary or harmful medications. Respected author and practicing psychotherapist Gary Greenberg embedded himself in the war that broke out over the fifth edition, and returned with an unsettling tale. Exposing the deeply flawed process behind the DSM-5’s compilation, The Book of Woe reveals how the manual turns suffering into a commodity—and made the APA its own biggest beneficiary.

This book examines a collaboration between traditional Māori healing and clinical psychiatry. Comprised of transcribed interviews and detailed meditations on practice, it demonstrates how bicultural partnership frameworks can augment mental health treatment by balancing local imperatives with sound and careful psychiatric care. In the first chapter, Māori healer Wiremu NiaNia outlines the key concepts that underpin his worldview and work. He then discusses the social, historical, and cultural context of his relationship with Allister Bush, a child and adolescent psychiatrist. The main body of the book comprises chapters that each recount the story of one young person and their family’s experience of Māori healing from three or more points of view: those of the psychiatrist, the Māori healer and the young person and other family members who participated in and experienced the healing. With a foreword by Sir Mason Durie, this book is essential reading for psychologists, social workers, nurses, therapists, psychiatrists, and students interested in bicultural studies.

The inspiration for the PBS series Mysterious of Mental Illness, Shrinks brilliantly tells the "astonishing" story of psychiatry's origins, demise, and redemption (Siddhartha Mukherjee). Psychiatry has come a long way since the days of chaining "lunatics" in cold cells and parading them as freakish marvels before a gaping public. But, as Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, the former president of the American Psychiatric Association, reveals in his extraordinary and eye-opening book, the path to legitimacy for "the black sheep of medicine" has been anything but smooth. In Shrinks, Dr. Lieberman traces the field from its birth as a mystic pseudo-science through its adolescence as a cult of "shrinks" to its late blooming maturity — beginning after World War II — as a science-driven profession that saves lives. With fascinating case studies and portraits of the luminaries of the field — from Sigmund Freud to Eric Kandel — Shrinks is a gripping and illuminating read, and an urgent call-to-arms to dispel the stigma of mental illnesses by treating them as diseases rather than unfortunate states of mind. “A lucid popular history...At once skeptical and triumphalist. It shows just how far psychiatry has come.” —Julia M. Klein, Boston Globe

In this stirring and beautifully written wake-up call, psychiatrist Daniel Carlat writes with bracing honesty about how psychiatry has so largely forsaken the practice of talk therapy for the seductive—and more lucrative—practice of simply prescribing drugs, with a host of deeply troubling consequences. Psychiatrist Daniel Carlat has noticed a pattern plaguing his profession. Psychiatrists have settled for treating symptoms rather than causes, embracing the apparent medical rigor of DSM diagnoses and prescription in place of learning the more challenging craft of therapeutic counseling, gaining only limited understanding of their patients’ lives. Talk therapy takes time, whereas the fifteen-minute "med check" allows for more patients and more insurance company reimbursement. Yet, DSM diagnoses, he shows, are premised on a good deal less science than we would think. Writing from an insider’s perspective, with refreshing forthrightness about his own daily struggles as a practitioner, Dr. Carlat shares a wealth of stories from his own practice and those of others that demonstrate the glaring shortcomings of the standard fifteen-minute patient visit. He also reveals the dangers of rampant diagnoses of bipolar disorder, ADHD, and other "popular" psychiatric disorders, and exposes the risks of the cocktails of medications so many patients are put on. Especially disturbing are the terrible consequences of overprescription of drugs to children of ever younger ages. Taking us on a tour of the world of pharmaceutical marketing, he also reveals the inner workings of collusion between psychiatrists and drug companies. Concluding with a road map for exactly how the profession should be reformed, Unhinged is vital reading for all those in treatment or considering it, as well as a stirring call to action for the large community of psychiatrists themselves. As physicians and drug companies continue to work together in disquieting and harmful ways, and as diagnoses—and misdiagnoses—of mental disorders skyrocket, it’s essential that Dr. Carlat’s bold call for reform is heeded.

This book offers a unique glimpse into the startlingly complex world of acute children's psychiatry through 12 chapters, each inspired by the actual visit of a child in psychiatric crisis to one of the most well-known psychiatric emergency rooms in the nation. Suicide by Security Blanket, and Other Stories from the Child Psychiatry Emergency Service: What Happens to Children with Acute Mental Illness takes the reader inside the child psychiatry emergency room at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston. Each chapter highlights both the child's dilemma and the doctors' thought processes, and stresses the elements of rapid assessment. The real-life patient stories also offer myriad teaching points about child development and the warning signs of illness, and provide compelling lessons regarding types of interactions with school systems, health care systems, and family systems. Each individual story presents the breadth and depth of the child psychiatric emergency evaluation at MGH, from initial assessment to disposition, presenting a genuine glimpse into the children's psychiatric emergency room at one of the nation's most famous psychiatric departments. This book demonstrates vividly how even the best-intentioned communities can fail to offer services to their neediest families. Each story presents a fascinating glimpse into the complex and sometimes tragic world of child psychiatry on the front lines.

The modem Brazilian short story begins with the mature work of Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), acclaimed almost unanimously as Brazil's greatest writer. Collectively, these nineteen stories are representative of Machado's unique style and world view, and this translation doubles the number of his stories previously available in English. The stories in this volume reflect Machado's post-1880 emphasis on social satire and experimentation in psychological realism. If he had continued to produce the moralistic love stories and parlor intrigues of his earlier fiction, Machado's legacy would have been an entertaining but inconsequent body of work. However, by 1880 he had begun a devastating satirical assault on society through his fiction. In spite of his ruthlessness, Machado does at times reveal an ironic sympathy for his characters. He is not indifferent to human conflict but uses humor and irony to stress the absurdity of these conflicts, acted out against the backdrop of an indifferent universe. Such a spectacle creates a sense of helplessness that can only inspire wistful amusement. In his technical mastery of the short story. Machado was decades ahead of his contemporaries and can still be considered more modern than most of the modernists themselves. That his stories elicit such strong and diverse reactions today is a tribute to their richness, complexity, and significance.

The Art of Narrative Psychiatry is the first book to comprehensively show narrative psychiatry in action. Lively and engaging, it offers psychiatrists and psychotherapists detailed guidance in collaborative narrative approaches to healing.