Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry ePub download

Although I am a graduating medical student with no interest in Psychiatry, I found this book extremely illuminating and a joy to read. It covers the history of psychiatry with a very balanced approach, albeit with an occidental bias.

This book convinced me that medicine can help even for mental illness. I hope to become a mental health nurse that can help people holistically, through medicine and therapy.

A book that keeps you diving deeper into the depth of where psychiatry started and it's advances to where it's at today. Over flowing with passion and dedication to mental illness, this book is a must!

I'm reading this in the last week of my psychiatry residency!It has provided me a greater context for the clinical knowledge that I have learned in the past four years. Strongly recommend!

I have met and worked with Jeff Lieberman at several points in my career. In this book, the characteristics I have always admired about him in person are plainly evident in print: his honest and straightforward style, his academic rigor, his ability to be a spokesperson and leader for our profession, his gentlemanly and kind demeanor. Although the book is meant for the general public, I would recommend it as a guide for psychiatrists at every stage of their careers, with the hope that the qualities of the author might be more widely emulated.

Psychiatrists, perhaps more than other physicians, are faced with very complex problems, which contain biological roots, psychological constructs, and many issues arising from social and political policy. Perhaps it is not surprising then that psychiatrists, like professional politicians dealing with problems of similar complexity, have had the tendency to form themselves into “camps” and to develop passionately held positions that frequently lack empirical support. For example, other books have described the near religious influence that psychoanalysis came to have in American academic psychiatry, but Dr. Lieberman reviews this period with a balanced point of view. While I certainly knew psychoanalysts in my career who seemed to “worship at the altar” in an unquestioning and dogmatic way, I also knew many others that impressed me with their humanity, their humility, their ability to control and examine their own reactions to the many stressful situations into which psychiatrists are called to intervene, and to stick with very difficult patients over long periods of time.

Likewise, Lieberman gives equal time to the chastisement of dogmatic biological reductionism. Especially interesting is the story of Nathan Kline, who after brilliant discoveries and professional acclaim, became perhaps the most prominent example of a kind of nonsensical “polypharmacy” that seems so common today. I have encountered many patients in my career bearing prescriptions for more than a dozen psychotropic medications, and at great risk for toxicity and side effects, without convincing evidence to justify the practice. I have also come to fear that large parts of the American public, constantly exposed to pharmaceutical company advertisements, have adopted the view that these very complex problems can be substantially altered solely by taking pills.

While Dr. Lieberman’s tone concerning the “scientific revolution” in psychiatry is justifiably optimistic, I would argue that psychiatry will remain the “problem stepchild” of medicine for some time to come. We are a long way from having data-driven practices that will improve the lives of the 25-30% of patients with severe mental illnesses that are “refractory” or fail to respond to most current treatments. We are a long way from having a satisfactory mental health care system that, in the absence of state hospital beds, has adequate resources for intermediate and long-term care for the severely ill. We are a long way from having simple answers for the “un-diagnosable” patients familiar to all hospital-based psychiatrists, who seem to have “a little bit of everything” – subtle developmental disabilities, mood and anxiety symptoms, psychosis, and substance abuse. At the end of the day, I agree with Dr. Lieberman in his call for a humane and pluralistic stance in the caregiver. There is no better spokesperson in psychiatry for this philosophy then Dr. Lieberman.

This was a very interesting book. I found it informative to clarify the history of psychiatry and how it grew to (eventually) become a science based practice. The humanity of many involved is inspiring. It was an easy read.
the goal of the author was to help people understand the state of psychiatry today and hopefully help reduce stigma of mental illness. I'm not sure he'll accomplish this with the book because I'm not sure that many people will read it. But if you are looking for answers about what psychiatry is all about and where some of the cliche's and stigmas come from, this book will be of interest to you.

Love this book. Must read for any health care provider. Easy read and down to earth :)

This book cleared up a lot of my confusion about where psychiatry came from and where it’s heading. It leaves me with a great sense of optimism about its practice and hope for those with mental illness. An enlightening read!