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  • Doctoring the Mind: Why Psychiatric Treatments Fail See large image

    Doctoring the Mind: Why Psychiatric Treatments Fail (Hardback) By (author) Richard P. Bentall

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    Short Description for Doctoring the MindTowards the end of the 20th century, the solution to mental illness seemed to be found. It lay in biological solutions. Arguing for a future of mental health treatment that focuses as much on patients as individuals as on the brain itself, this book intends to redefine our understanding of the treatment of madness in the twenty-first century.
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  • Informative, interesting and very readable.5

    Dr Frank Beesley Firstly, I think it is important for me to state my interest, as it were. I am a clinical psychologist who works in the NHS, have been reading the work of Richard Bentall for a number of years and agree with his overall philosophy about mental health issues.

    Despite the above I think that I can still comment and recommend this book, like most of the other reviewers, on a number of levels:
    As my title suggests, it is informative, interesting, and very readable
    Richard writes well and conveys some very complex information in a format that I think non-professionals would find helpful. He has an uncanny knack of explaining some quite complex material in a way that the reader can understand them, me included, for example, when he briefly explains some statistics in the book)
    The book is interspersed with anonymous accounts of Richard's work with different clients over the years and these bring the debates in each of the chapters to life
    When talking about his clients he is humble enough to admit that, "I suspect that the time we have spent together has often been of more benefit to me than them"
    The book is not just a tirade or polemic as it is well referenced throughout and he clearly states his interests and biases

    For those who were wondering about the format of the book; Part 1, covering four chapters, deals with the history of psychiatric care and asks whether psychiatry has made a significantly positive impact upon people who suffer from mental health problems. Part 2, covering three chapters, discusses the psychiatric diagnostic system, psychiatric difficulties and whether they can be said to be genetically determined or viewed as "brain diseases". Part 3, covering four chapters, talks about the conflict of interests in researching new ways of helping people with mental health problems, especially focusing on the pharmaceutical industry, specifically looks at one class of medications (antipsychotics), then explores how effective psychotherapy is for people suffering from experiences that could be labelled psychosis and finally asks about what can be done to improve services for people struggling with mental health problems in the 21str century.

    I thoroughly enjoyed this book and if you think you can handle one that is a little longer and maybe a bit more academically written (as it is extremely well referenced); his last book Madness Explained is just as good. by Dr Frank Beesley

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