Advertisement
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: The Medicalization of Everyday Life Thomas Szasz, 2007-10-08 This collection of impassioned essays, published between 1973 and 2006, chronicles Thomas Szasz’s long campaign against the orthodoxies of “pharmacracy,” that is, the alliance of medicine and the state. From “Diagnoses Are Not Diseases” to “The Existential Identity Thief,” “Fatal Temptation,” and “Killing as Therapy,” the book delves into the complex evolution of medicalization, concluding with “Pharmacracy: The New Despotism.” In practice, society must draw a line between what counts as medical practice and what does not. Where it draws that line goes far in defining the kinds of laws its citizens live under, the kinds of medical care they receive, and the kinds of lives they are allowed to live. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: Pharmacracy Thomas Szasz, 2003-09-01 The modern penchant for transforming human problems into diseases and judicial sanctions into treatments, replacing the rule of law with the rule of medical discretion, leads to a type of government social critic Thomas Szasz calls pharmacracy. He warns that the creeping substitution of democracy for pharmacracyprivate personal concerns increasingly perceived as requiring a medical-political responseinexorably erodes personal freedom and dignity. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: The Meaning of Mind Thomas Szasz, 2002-08-01 This is Szasz's most ambitious work to date. In his best-selling book, The Myth of Mental Illness, he took psychiatry to task for misconstruing human conflict and coping as mental illness. In Our Right to Drugs, he exposed the irrationality and political opportunism that fuels the Drug War. In The Meaning of Mind, he warns that we misconstrue the dialogue within as a problem of consciousness and neuroscience, and do so at our own peril. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: Psychiatry Thomas Szasz, 2008-09-08 For more than half a century, Thomas Szasz has devoted much of his career to a radical critique of psychiatry. His latest work, Psychiatry: The Science of Lies, is a culmination of his life’s work: to portray the integral role of deception in the history and practice of psychiatry. Szasz argues that the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness stands in the same relationship to the diagnosis and treatment of bodily illness that the forgery of a painting does to the original masterpiece. Art historians and the legal system seek to distinguish forgeries from originals. Those concerned with medicine, on the other hand—physicians, patients, politicians, health insurance providers, and legal professionals—take the opposite stance when faced with the challenge of distinguishing everyday problems in living from bodily diseases, systematically authenticating nondiseases as diseases. The boundary between disease and nondisease—genuine and imitation, truth and falsehood—thus becomes arbitrary and uncertain. There is neither glory nor profit in correctly demarcating what counts as medical illness and medical healing from what does not. Individuals and families wishing to protect themselves from medically and politically authenticated charlatanry are left to their own intellectual and moral resources to make critical decisions about human dilemmas miscategorized as “mental diseases” and about medicalized responses misidentified as “psychiatric treatments.” Delivering his sophisticated analysis in lucid prose and with a sharp wit, Szasz continues to engage and challenge readers of all backgrounds. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: Ceremonial Chemistry Thomas Szasz, 2003-10-01 Responding to the controversy surrounding drug use and drug criminalization, Thomas Szasz suggests that the therapeutic state has overstepped its bounds in labeling certain drugs as dangerous substances and incarcerating drug addicts in order to cure them. Szasz shows that such policies scapegoat certain drugs as well as the persons who sell, buy, or use them; and 'misleadingly pathologize the drug problem by defining disapproved drug use as disease and efforts to change the behavior as treatment. Readers will find in Szasz's arguments a cogent and committed response to a worldwide debate. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: Law, Liberty, and Psychiatry Thomas Stephen Szasz, United States, 2012-03-01 |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: The New Blackwell Companion to Medical Sociology William C. Cockerham, 2016-09-26 An authoritative, topical, and comprehensive reference to the key concepts and most important traditional and contemporary issues in medical sociology. Contains 35 chapters by recognized experts in the field, both established and rising young scholars Covers standard topics in the field as well as new and engaging issues such as bioterrorism, bioethics, and infectious disease Chapters are thematically arranged to cover the major issues of the sub-discipline Global range of contributors and an international perspective |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: Suicide Prohibition Thomas Szasz, 2011-10-12 In Western thought, suicide has evolved from sin to sin-and-crime, to crime, to mental illness, and to semilegal act. A legal act is one we are free to think and speak about and plan and perform, without penalty by agents of the state. While dying voluntarily is ostensibly legal, suicide attempts and even suicidal thoughts are routinely punished by incarceration in a psychiatric institution. Although many people believe the prevention of suicide is one of the duties the modern state owes its citizens, Szasz argues that suicide is a basic human right and that the lengths to which the medical industry goes to prevent it represent a deprivation of that right. Drawing on his general theory of the myth of mental illness, Szasz makes a compelling case that the voluntary termination of one's own life is the result of a decision, not a disease. He presents an in-depth examination and critique of contemporary anti-suicide policies, which are based on the notion that voluntary death is a mental health problem, and systematically lays out the dehumanizing consequences of psychiatrizing suicide prevention. If suicide be deemed a problem, it is not a medical problem. Managing it as if it were a disease, or the result of a disease, will succeed only in debasing medicine and corrupting the law. Pretending to be the pride of medicine, psychiatry is its shame. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: The Medicalization of Society Peter Conrad, 2007-06-11 Building on more than three decades of research, Peter Conrad explores the forces behind the trend to treat what were once commonly considered normal human conditions as medical ailments. Using case studies of short stature, social anxiety, male menopause, erectile dysfunction, adult ADHD, and sexual orientation, he examines the emergence of and changes in medicalization, the consequences of the expanding medical domain, and the implications for health and society. This thought-provoking study offers valuable insights into how medicalization got to this point and where it is heading. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: The Philosophical Defence of Psychiatry Lawrie Reznek, 2005-07-08 By first analysing the arguments of psychiatry's critics and the philosophical ideas of such thinkers as Freud, Eysenck, Laing, Szasz, Sedgwick and Foucault and by then providing answers to the many contentious and diverse questions raised, Dr. Reznek aims to establish a philosophical defence of the theory and practice of psychiatry. As both a qualified philosopher and psychiatrist, the author is exceptionally p[laced to undertake the examination of a subject which has hitherto remained untackled. It will be easily accessible to a wide variety of non-specialists as well. It will be of specific interest to those involved in the practice of philosophy, psychiatry, clinical psychology, social work and psychiatric nursing. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: Deviance and Medicalization Peter Conrad, 2010-04-20 A classic text on deviance is updated and reissued. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: Psychology, Mental Health and Distress John Cromby, David Harper, Paula Reavey, 2017-09-16 Is depression simply the result of chemical imbalances, or Schizophrenia a wholly biological disorder? What role do the broader circumstances of an individual's social, cultural and heuristic world play in the wider scheme of their psychological wellbeing? In this ground-breaking and highly innovative text, Cromby et al deliver an introduction to the the biopsychosocial paradigm for understanding and treating psychological distress, taking into consideration the wider contexts that engender the onset of mental illness and critiquing the limitations in the sole use of the biomedical model in psychological practice. Rather than biologically determined or clinically measurable, readers are encouraged to consider mental illness as a subjective experience that is expressed according to the individual experiences of the sufferer rather than the rigidity of diagnostic categories. Similarly, approaches to recovery expand beyond psychiatric medication to consider the fundamental function of methods such as psychotherapy, community psychology and service-user movements in the recovery process. Offering a holistic account of the experience of psychological distress, this text draws upon not only statistical evidence but places an integral emphasis on the service-user experience; anecdotal accounts of which feature throughout in order to provide readers with the perspective of the mental health sufferer. Taking an integrative approach to the psychology of mental health, the authors draw from a wealth of experience, examples and approaches to present this student-friendly and engaging text. This is core reading for anyone serious about understanding mental health issues and is suitable for undergraduate students taking introductory courses in psychology and abnormal psychology. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: EBOOK: A Sociology of Mental Health and Illness Anne Rogers, David Pilgrim, 2014-05-16 How do we understand mental health problems in their social context? A former BMA Medical Book of the Year award winner, this book provides a sociological analysis of major areas of mental health and illness. The book considers contemporary and historical aspects of sociology, social psychiatry, policy and therapeutic law to help students develop an in-depth and critical approach to this complex subject.New developments for the fifth edition include: Brand new chapter on prisons, criminal justice and mental health Expanded coverage of stigma, class and social networks Updated material on the Mental Capacity Act, Mental Health Act and the Deprivation of Liberty A classic in its field, this well established textbook offers a rich and well-crafted overview of mental health and illness unrivalled by competitors and is essential reading for students and professionals studying a range of medical sociology and health-related courses. It is also highly suitable for trainee mental health workers in the fields of social work, nursing, clinical psychology and psychiatry. Rogers and Pilgrim go from strength to strength! This fifth edition of their classic text is not only a sociology but also a psychology, a philosophy, a history and a polity. It combines rigorous scholarship with radical argument to produce incisive perspectives on the major contemporary questions concerning mental health and illness. The authors admirably balance judicious presentation of the range of available understandings with clear articulation of their own positions on key issues. This book is essential reading for everyone involved in mental health work. Christopher Dowrick, Professor of Primary Medical Care, University of Liverpool, UK Pilgrim and Rogers have for the last twenty years given us the key text in the sociology of mental health and illness. Each edition has captured the multi-layered and ever changing landscape of theory and practice around psychiatry and mental health, providing an essential tool for teachers and researchers, and much loved by students for the dexterity in combining scope and accessibility. This latest volume, with its focus on community mental health, user movements criminal justice and the need for inter-agency working, alongside the more classical sociological critiques around social theories and social inequalities, demonstrates more than ever that sociological perspectives are crucial in the understanding and explanation of mental and emotional healthcare and practice, hence its audience extends across the related disciplines to everyone who is involved in this highly controversial and socially relevant arena. Gillian Bendelow, School of Law Politics and Sociology, University of Sussex, UK From the classic bedrock studies to contemporary sociological perspectives on the current controversy over which scientific organizations will define diagnosis, Rogers and Pilgrim provide a comprehensive, readable and elegant overview of how social factors shape the onset and response to mental health and mental illness. Their sociological vision embraces historical, professional and socio-cultural context and processes as they shape the lives of those in the community and those who provide care; the organizations mandated to deliver services and those that have ended up becoming unsuitable substitutes; and the successful and unsuccessful efforts to improve the lives through science, challenge and law. Bernice Pescosolido, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Indiana University, USA |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: The Theology of Medicine Thomas Szasz, 1979 |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: Madness and Civilization Michel Foucault, 2013-01-30 Michel Foucault examines the archeology of madness in the West from 1500 to 1800 - from the late Middle Ages, when insanity was still considered part of everyday life and fools and lunatics walked the streets freely, to the time when such people began to be considered a threat, asylums were first built, and walls were erected between the insane and the rest of humanity. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: Antipsychiatry Thomas Szasz, 2009-09-08 More than fifty years ago, Thomas Szasz showed that the concept of mental illness—a disease of the mind—is an oxymoron, a metaphor, a myth. Disease, in the medical sense, affects only the body. He also demonstrated that civil commitment and the insanity defense, the paradigmatic practices of psychiatry, are incompatible with the political values of personal responsibility and individual liberty. The psychiatric establishment’s rejection of Szasz’s critique posed no danger to his work: its defense of coercions and excuses as “therapy” supported his argument regarding the metaphorical nature of mental illness and the transparent immorality of brutal psychiatric control masquerading as humane medical care. In the late 1960s, the launching of the so-called antipsychiatry movement vitiated Szasz’s effort to present a precisely formulated conceptual and political critique of the medical identity of psychiatry. Led by the Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing, the antipsychiatrists used the term to attract attention to themselves and to deflect attention from what they did, which included coercions and excuses based on psychiatric principles and power. For this reason, Szasz rejected, and continues to reject, psychiatry and antipsychiatry with equal vigor. Subsuming his work under the rubric of antipsychiatry betrays and negates it just as surely and effectively as subsuming it under the rubric of psychiatry. In Antipsychiatry: Quackery Squared, Szasz powerfully argues that his writings belong to neither psychiatry nor antipsychiatry. They stem from conceptual analysis, social-political criticism, and common sense. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: Fatal Freedom Thomas Szasz, 2002-08-01 Fatal Freedom is an eloquent defense of every individual’s right to choose F a voluntary death. By maintaining statutes that determine that voluntary death is not legal, Thomas Szasz believes that our society is forfeiting one of its basic freedoms and causing the psychiatric medical establishment to treat individuals in a manner that is disturbingly inhumane. Society’s penchant for defining behavior it terms objectionable as a disease has created a psychiatric establishment that exerts far too much influence over how and when we choose to die. In a compelling argument that clearly and intelligently addresses one of the most significant ethical issues of our time, Szasz compares suicide to other practices that historically began as sins, became crimes, and now arc seen as mental illnesses. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: Saving Normal Allen Frances, 2014-08-12 International Bestseller A deeply fascinating and urgently important critique of the widespread medicalization of normality Anyone living a full, rich life experiences ups and downs, stresses, disappointments, sorrows, and setbacks. Today, however, millions of people who are really no more than worried well are being diagnosed as having a mental disorder and receiving unnecessary treatment. In Saving Normal, Allen Frances, one of the world's most influential psychiatrists, explains why stigmatizing a healthy person as mentally ill leads to unnecessary, harmful medications, the narrowing of horizons, the misallocation of medical resources, and the draining of the budgets of families and the nation. We also shift responsibility for our mental well-being away from our own naturally resilient brains and into the hands of Big Pharma, who are reaping multi-billion-dollar profits. Frances cautions that the newest edition of the bible of psychiatry, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5 (DSM-5), is turning our current diagnostic inflation into hyperinflation by converting millions of normal people into mental patients. Saving Normal is a call to all of us to reclaim the full measure of our humanity. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: The Therapeutic State Thomas Szasz, 1984 Chiefly reprints of articles originally published 1965-1983. Includes bibliographies and index. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: Critical Perspectives on Mental Health Vicki Coppock, John Hopton, 2002-01-04 Over the last forty years, there have been numerous attempts to critique the theory and practice of mental health care. Taking its lead from anti-psychiatry, Critical Perspectives on Mental Health seeks to explore and evaluate the claims of mainstream mental health ideologies and to establish what implications the critiques of these perspectives have for practice. This text will be essential reading for students and those working in the social work and mental health care professions. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: Artificial Happiness Ronald W. Dworkin, 2007-05-18 Reveals the dark side of the staggering rise in antidepressant prescription, alternative medicine, etc. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: The Cambridge History of Medicine Roy Porter, 2006-06-05 The Cambridge History of Medicine, first published in 2006, surveys the rise of medicine in the West from classical times to the present. Covering both the social and scientific history of medicine, this volume traces the chronology of key developments and events, while at the same time engaging with the issues, discoveries, and controversies that have beset and characterized medical progress. The authors weave a narrative that connects disease, doctors, primary care, surgery, the rise of hospitals, drug treatment and pharmacology, mental illness and psychiatry. This volume emphasizes the crucial developments of the past 150 years, but also examines classical, medieval, and Islamic and East Asian medicine. Authoritative and accessible, The Cambridge History of Medicine is for readers wanting a lively and informative introduction to medical history. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: Critical Psychiatry David Ingleby, 1980 The reissue of this book, 24 years after its first publication, is a very welcome initiative by Free Association Books. When Critical Psychiatry saw the light of day, the debate over psychiatry which had raged in the 1960's and 1970's was well past its pe |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: Limits to Medicine Ivan Illich, 1991-03 |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behavior Lance Workman, Will Reader, Jerome H. Barkow, 2020-03-19 The transformative wave of Darwinian insight continues to expand throughout the human sciences. While still centered on evolution-focused fields such as evolutionary psychology, ethology, and human behavioral ecology, this insight has also influenced cognitive science, neuroscience, feminist discourse, sociocultural anthropology, media studies, and clinical psychology. This handbook's goal is to amplify the wave by bringing together world-leading experts to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of evolution-oriented and influenced fields. While evolutionary psychology remains at the core of the collection, it also covers the history, current standing, debates, and future directions of the panoply of fields entering the Darwinian fold. As such, The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behavior is a valuable reference not just for evolutionary psychologists but also for scholars and students from many fields who wish to see how the evolutionary perspective is relevant to their own work. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: The Untamed Tongue Thomas Szasz, 1990 This is a new collection of biting aphorisms and provocative meditations by the master iconoclast of our age. Of The Untamed Tongue Szasz says: I have tried, in the tradition of Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, to present a satirical overview of the current state of the 'human comedy' -- with special emphasis on psychiatry, therapy, and related follies. The entries in this heretical 'dictionary' are arranged under such headings as ethics, liberty, love, money, politics, psychiatry, psychotherapy, punishment, religion, sex, social relations, and suicide. They all reveal Szasz at his courageous and outrageous best, as he takes on the government's futile and murderous 'war on drugs', exposes the hypocrisies of psychotherapy and the atrocities of psychiatry, and defends the individual's most sacred right -- the right to suicide. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: The Manufacture of Madness Thomas Szasz, 1970 Refers to psychiatric interventions imposed on persons by others. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: Creating Mental Illness Allan V. Horwitz, 2020-04-09 “Filled with insights into the social, historical, and economic forces responsible for the overmedicalization of human unhappiness and distress.” —George Graham, Metapsychology In this surprising book, Allan V. Horwitz argues that our current conceptions of mental illness as a disease fit only a small number of serious psychological conditions and that most conditions currently regarded as mental illness are cultural constructions, normal reactions to stressful social circumstances, or simply forms of deviant behavior. “Thought-provoking and important . . . Drawing on and consolidating the ideas of a range of authors, Horwitz challenges the existing use of the term mental illness and the psychiatric ideas and practices on which this usage is based . . . Horwitz enters this controversial territory with confidence, conviction, and clarity.” —Joan Busfield, American Journal of Sociology “Horwitz properly identifies the financial incentives that urge therapists and drug companies to proliferate psychiatric diagnostic categories. He correctly identifies the stranglehold that psychiatric diagnosis has on research funding in mental health. Above all, he provides a sorely needed counterpoint to the most strident advocates of disease-model psychiatry.” —Mark Sullivan, Journal of the American Medical Association “Horwitz makes at least two major contributions to our understanding of mental disorders. First, he eloquently draws on evidence from the biological and social sciences to create a balanced, integrative approach to the study of mental disorders. Second, in accomplishing the first contribution, he provides a fascinating history of the study and treatment of mental disorders . . . from early asylum work to the rise of modern biological psychiatry.”— Debra Umberson, Quarterly Review of Biology |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: International Handbook of Psychology Learning and Teaching Joerg Zumbach, Douglas A. Bernstein, Susanne Narciss, Giuseppina Marsico, 2022-12-16 The International Handbook of Psychology Learning and Teaching is a reference work for psychology learning and teaching worldwide that takes a multi-faceted approach and includes national, international, and intercultural perspectives. Whether readers are interested in the basics of how and what to teach, in training psychology teachers, in taking steps to improve their own teaching, or in planning or implementing research on psychology learning and teaching, this handbook will provide an excellent place to start. Chapters address ideas, issues, and innovations in the teaching of all psychology courses, whether offered in psychology programs or as part of curricula in other disciplines. The book also presents reviews of relevant literature and best practices related to everything from the basics of course organization to the use of teaching technology. Three major sections consisting of several chapters each address “Teaching Psychology in Tertiary (Higher) Education”, “Psychology Learning and Teaching for All Audiences”, and “General Educational and Instructional Approaches to Psychology Learning and Teaching”. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: Mad Matters Brenda A. LeFrançois, Robert Menzies, Geoffrey Reaume, 2013 In 1981, Toronto activist Mel Starkman wrote: An important new movement is sweeping through the western world.... The 'mad,' the oppressed, the ex-inmates of society's asylums are coming together and speaking for themselves. Mad Matters is the first Canadian book to bring together the writings of this vital movement, which has grown explosively in the years since. With contributions from scholars in numerous disciplines, as well as activists and psychiatric survivors, it presents diverse critical voices that convey the lived experiences of the psychiatrized and challenges dominant understandings of mental illness. The connections between mad activism and other liberation struggles are stressed throughout, making the book a major contribution to the literature on human rights and anti-oppression. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: Handbook of Clinical Sociology Howard M. Rebach, John G. Bruhn, 2012-12-06 Clinical sociology is an action-oriented field that seeks to prevent, reduce, or resolve the seemingly overwhelming number of social problems confronting modern society. In an extensive revision of the first edition of this classic text and reference, published by Plenum in 1990, the editors have assembled a distinguished roster of contributors to address such topics as theory and practice; intervention at various levels of social organization; specific kinds of sociological practice; social problems; and the process of becoming a clinical sociologist. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: Identifying Hyperactive Children Peter Conrad, 2017-09-29 This is a new and expanded edition of a classic case-study in the medicalization of ADHD, originally published in 1976. The book centres on an empirical study of the process of identifying hyperactive children, providing a perceptive and accessible introduction to the concepts and issues involved. In this revised edition, Peter Conrad sets the original study in context, demonstrating the continuing relevance of his research. He highlights the issues at stake, outlining recent changes in our understanding of ADHD and reviewing recent sociological research. Peter Conrad is Harry Coplan Professor of Social Sciences at Brandeis University, USA. He has written extensively in the area of medical sociology, publishing nine books and over eighty articles and chapters. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: Screening Angela E. Raffle, Anne Mackie, J. A. Muir Gray, 2019-06-06 Screening programmes involve the systematic offer of testing for populations or groups of apparently healthy people to identify individuals who may be at future risk of a particular medical condition or disease, with the aim of offering intervention to reduce their risk. For many years, screening was practised without debate, and without evidence, but in the 1960s serious challenges were raised about many of the screening procedures then being practised. Benefits and harms of screening must be measured in high quality trials, and the benefits of screening must be weighed alongside the negative side-effects. Concerns were raised about potential and actual harm arising when people without a health problem received dangerous and unnecessary investigations and treatments as a result of routine screening tests. Controversy raged, and it took some 50 years to achieve widespread recognition that evidence-based and quality assured programme delivery was essential, coupled with provision of balanced informed to enable informed choice for potential participants. Commercially motivated provision of poor quality and non-evidence based screening tests is increasing and screening remains a highly contested topic that has relevance in all health systems including for the general public and media. This book serves as a practical and comprehensive guide to all aspects of screening. Following the international success of the first edition, this second edition brings extensive updates and new case study material. The first section deals with concepts, methods, and evidence, charts the story of screening back to 1861, and covers all aspects of a screening programme and how to research the full consequences. The second section is a practical guide to sound policy-making and to high quality delivery of best value screening. The controversies, paradoxes, uncertainties, and ethical dilemmas of screening are explained, and each chapter is packed with examples, real-life case histories, helpful summary points, and self-test questions. Reference is made to the NHS, a leader in screening, but the primary focus is on universal principles, making the book highly relevant across the globe. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: The Validity of Psychiatric Diagnosis Lee N. Robins, James Elmer Barrett, 1989 Derived from the 1988 annual meeting of the Association (place not specified). Contributors review conceptual issues, longitudinal consistency, descriptive consistency, evidence from family studies, laboratory tests and treatment response. The final section considers future directions. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: Mad in America Robert Whitaker, 2019-09-10 An updated edition of the classic history of schizophrenia in America, which gives voice to generations of patients who suffered through cures that only deepened their suffering and impaired their hope of recovery Schizophrenics in the United States currently fare worse than patients in the world's poorest countries. In Mad in America, medical journalist Robert Whitaker argues that modern treatments for the severely mentally ill are just old medicine in new bottles, and that we as a society are deeply deluded about their efficacy. The widespread use of lobotomies in the 1920s and 1930s gave way in the 1950s to electroshock and a wave of new drugs. In what is perhaps Whitaker's most damning revelation, Mad in America examines how drug companies in the 1980s and 1990s skewed their studies to prove that new antipsychotic drugs were more effective than the old, while keeping patients in the dark about dangerous side effects. A haunting, deeply compassionate book -- updated with a new introduction and prologue bringing in the latest medical treatments and trends -- Mad in America raises important questions about our obligations to the mad, the meaning of insanity, and what we value most about the human mind. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: The Medicalization of Birth and Death Lauren K. Hall, 2019-12-17 Improving how individuals give birth and die in the United States requires reforming the regulatory, reimbursement, and legal structures that centralize care in hospitals and prevent the growth of community-based alternatives. In 1900, most Americans gave birth and died at home, with minimal medical intervention. By contrast, most Americans today begin and end their lives in hospitals. The medicalization we now see is due in large part to federal and state policies that draw patients away from community-based providers, such as birth centers and hospice care, and toward the most intensive and costliest kinds of care. But the evidence suggests that birthing and dying people receive too much—even harmful—medical intervention. In The Medicalization of Birth and Death, political scientist Lauren K. Hall describes how and why birth and death became medicalized events. While hospitalization provides certain benefits, she acknowledges, it also creates harms, limiting patient autonomy, driving up costs, and causing a cascade of interventions, many with serious side effects. Tracing the regulatory, legal, and financial policies that centralize care during birth and death, Hall argues that medicalization reduces competition, stifles innovation, and prevents individuals from accessing the most appropriate care during their most vulnerable moments. She also examines the profound implications of policy-enforced medicalization on informed consent and shows how medicalization challenges the healthcare community's most foundational ethical commitments. Drawing on interviews with medical and nonmedical healthcare providers, as well as surveys of patients and their families, Hall provides a broad overview of the costs, benefits, and origins of medicalized birth and death. The Medicalization of Birth and Death is required reading for academics, patients, providers, policymakers, and anyone else interested in how policy shapes healthcare options and limits patients and providers during life's most profound moments. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: Popular Culture as Everyday Life Dennis D. Waskul, Phillip Vannini, 2015-11-19 In Popular Culture and Everyday Life Phillip Vannini and Dennis Waskul have brought together a variety of short essays that illustrate the many ways that popular culture intersects with mundane experiences of everyday life. Most essays are written in a reflexive ethnographic style, primarily through observation and personal narrative, to convey insights at an intimate level that will resonate with most readers. Some of the topics are so mundane they are legitimately universal (sleeping, getting dressed, going to the bathroom, etc.), others are common enough that most readers will directly identify in some way (watching television, using mobile phones, playing video games, etc.), while some topics will appeal more-or-less depending on a reader’s gender, interests, and recreational pastimes (putting on makeup, watching the Super Bowl, homemaking, etc.). This book will remind readers of their own similar experiences, provide opportunities to reflect upon them in new ways, as well as compare and contrast how experiences relayed in these pages relate to lived experiences. The essays will easily translate into rich and lively classroom discussions that shed new light on a familiar, taken-for-granted everyday life—both individually and collectively. At the beginning of the book, the authors have provided a grid that shows the topics and themes that each article touches on. This book is for popular culture classes, and will also be an asset in courses on the sociology of everyday life, ethnography, and social psychology. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: Big Pharma Jacky Law, 2006 Pharmaceutical medicine is very, very big business. The top ten players earned more than $200 billion in 2003. One drug, Pfizer's cholesterol pill Lipitor, had sales of more than $9 billion. This kind of money buys an awful lot of friends among doctors and politicians. Most of those involved in the formulation of public health policy seems happy with the present system. The trouble is that the public is starting to have doubts. There is a growing sense that the vast profits of drug companies and their control of the research agenda might not be that good for our health. Jacky Law takes the reader on a journey through the pharmaceutical business and shows how the public is quite right to be concerned about conventional medicine, as it has developed since the late 1970s. She tells a story of spectacular regulatory failure, phenomenally high prices, betrayal of the public interest and a growing awareness among ordinary people that things could be very different. Sophisticated marketing and public relations, not scientific excellence, have helped corporations to preside unchallenged over matters of life and death. It is time, Law argues, for us to take responsibility for our health, not as passive consumers of pharmaceutical medicine, but as informed citizens. |
| thomas szasz the medicalization of everyday life: Psychiatric Slavery Thomas Szasz, 1977 |
YouTube
Explore and share videos, music, and more on YouTube, the leading platform for online video streaming and sharing.
Thomas & Friends UK | Baa! | Full Episode Compilation - YouTube
Percy is excited about the best dressed station competition on the island. A stray ram saves Maithwaite station's chances of winning and gets a very tasty tr...
Thomas & Friends | Number One Engine | Kids Cartoon - YouTube
Subscribe to Thomas & Friends on YouTube: http://bit.ly/SubscribeToTFAbout Thomas & Friends:Based on a series of children's books, "Thomas & Friends" feature...
Thomas & Friends UK | Best Friends | Full Episode Compilations
Subscribe for new fun, songs, and games at the Official Thomas & Friends UK YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ThomasAndFriendsUKWatch more Thomas & Friends!🔵...
Thomas the Rescue Engine | Cartoon Compilation - YouTube
About Thomas & Friends: Based on a series of children's books, "Thomas & Friends" features Thomas the Tank Engine adventures with other locomotives on the island of Sodor. Thomas …
Thomas & Friends The Adventure Begins US - Full Movie - YouTube
© 2015 Hit Entertainment Ltd. subsidiary of Mattel, Inc.Subscribe to Thomas & Friends on YouTube: http://bit.ly/SubscribeToTFAll aboard for Thomas' very fir...
Thomas & Friends™ Being Percy - YouTube
Victor Says Yes About Thomas & Friends: Based on a series of children's books, "Thomas & Friends" features Thomas the Tank Engine adventures with other locomotives on the island of …
Thomas Road Baptist Church - YouTube
http://trbc.org – Love God, Love People.Our mission is to change our world by developing Christ followers who Love God and Love People.
Thomas and Friends- Theme Song - YouTube
Parents, now your little engine can catch the Thomas & Friends special weekend marathon on CBeebies from Saturday, 16 Nov! 🚂🚂Let’s dance and sing along to ...
Thomas & Friends Put the batteries into the unique toys RiChannel
★Unique toys ~ https://youtu.be/DS6mHpy7MoE★Thomas ~ https://youtu.be/cfH1uOWuo2I★Magnetic Slime ~ https://youtu.be/XDQ-EHdXp7M★Percy …
YouTube
Explore and share videos, music, and more on YouTube, the leading platform for online video streaming and …
Thomas & Friends UK | Baa! | Full Episode Compilation - Yo…
Percy is excited about the best dressed station competition on the island. A stray ram saves Maithwaite station's chances of winning and gets a very …
Thomas & Friends | Number One Engine | Kids Cartoon - Y…
Subscribe to Thomas & Friends on YouTube: http://bit.ly/SubscribeToTFAbout Thomas & Friends:Based on a series …
Thomas & Friends UK | Best Friends | Full Episode Compil…
Subscribe for new fun, songs, and games at the Official Thomas & Friends UK YouTube Channel: http://bit.ly/ThomasAndFriendsUKWatch …
Thomas the Rescue Engine | Cartoon Compilation - YouTube
About Thomas & Friends: Based on a series of children's books, "Thomas & Friends" features Thomas the Tank Engine adventures with other …
