[Harper Collins Publishers]
Kategoria: Książki / Literatura obcojęzyczna
medicalization of normality.§§Anyone living a full, rich life
experiences ups and downs, stresses, disappointments, sorrows, and
setbacks. These challenges are a normal part of being
human, and...
Pełen opis produktu 'Saving Normal. Normal, englische Ausgabe' »
From "the most powerful psychiatrist in America" (New York Times)
and "the man who wrote the book on mental illness" (Wired), 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. These challenges are a normal part of being human,
and they should not be treated as psychiatric disease. However,
today millions of people who are really no more than "worried well"
are being diagnosed as having a mental disorder and are receiving
unnecessary treatment. In Saving Normal, Allen Frances, one of the
world's most influential psychiatrists, warns that mislabeling
everyday problems as mental illness has shocking implications for
individuals and society: stigmatizing a healthy person as mentally
ill leads to unnecessary, harmful medications, the narrowing of
horizons, misallocation of medical resources, and draining of the
budgets of families and the nation. We also shift responsibility
for our mental well-being away from our own naturally resilient and
self-healing brains, which have kept us sane for hundreds of
thousands of years, and into the hands of "Big Pharma," who are
reaping multi-billion-dollar profits.§§Frances cautions that the
new edition of the "bible of psychiatry," the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5 (DSM-5), will turn our
current diagnostic inflation into hyperinflation by converting
millions of "normal" people into "mental patients." Alarmingly, in
DSM-5, normal grief will become "Major Depressive Disorder"; the
forgetting seen in old age is "Mild Neurocognitive Disorder";
temper tantrums are "Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder";
worrying about a medical illness is "Somatic Symptom Disorder";
gluttony is "Binge Eating Disorder"; and most of us will qualify
for adult "Attention Deficit Disorder." What's more, all of these
newly invented conditions will worsen the cruel paradox of the
mental health industry: those who desperately need psychiatric help
are left shamefully neglected, while the "worried well" are given
the bulk of the treatment, often at their own
detriment.§§Masterfully charting the history of psychiatric fads
throughout history, Frances argues that whenever we arbitrarily
label another aspect of the human condition a "disease," we further
chip away at our human adaptability and diversity, dulling the full
palette of what is normal and losing something fundamental of
ourselves in the process. Saving Normal is a call to all of us to
reclaim the full measure of our humanity.
