Title Before Prozac : the troubled history of mood disorders in psychiatry / Edward Shorter

Published Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2009

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Description 1 online resource (xvi, 304 pages) Contents Before psychopharmacology -- The first drug set -- Power play -- Killer drugs! -- Death sentences -- "The plague of affective disorders" -- Losing ground -- What now? Summary Psychiatry today is a barren tundra, writes medical historian Edward Shorter, where drugs that don't work are used to treat diseases that don't exist. In this provocative volume, Shorter illuminates this dismal landscape, in a revealing account of why psychiatry is "losing ground" in the struggle to treat depression. Naturally, the book looks at such culprits as the pharmaceutical industry, which is not inclined to market drugs once the patent expires, leading to the endless introduction of new--but not necessarily better--drugs. But the heart of the book focuses on an unexpected villain: the FDA, the very agency charged with ensuring drug safety and effectiveness. Shorter describes how the FDA permits companies to test new products only against placebo. If you can beat sugar pills, you get your drug licensed, whether or not it is actually better than (or even as good as) current medications, thus sweeping from the shelves drugs that may be superior but have lost patent protection. The book also examines the FDA's early power struggles against the drug industry, an influence-grab that had little to do with science, and which left barbiturates, opiates, and amphetamines all underprescribed, despite the fact that under careful supervision they are better at treating depression, with fewer side effects, than the newer drugs in the Prozac family. Shorter also castigates academia, showing how two forms of depression, melancholia and nonmelancholia--"as different from each other as chalk and cheese"--Became squeezed into one dubious classification, major depression, which was essentially a political artifact born of academic infighting. An astonishing and troubling look at modern psychiatry, Losing Ground is a book that is sure to spark controversy for years to come Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes English Print version record Subject Affective disorders -- Chemotherapy -- United States -- History Psychotropic drugs -- United States -- History Psychopharmacology -- United States -- History Serotonin uptake inhibitors -- Therapeutic use -- History Psychotropic drugs industry -- United States -- History Pharmaceutical policy -- United States -- History 1900s Depression -- history Drug Approval -- history Fluoxetine -- history Mood Disorders -- drug therapy Psychopharmacology -- history Psychotropic Drugs -- history Amphetamines -- history Antidepressive Agents -- history Barbiturates -- history Benzodiazepines -- history Drug Industry -- history Government Agencies -- history Histamine Antagonists -- history Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors -- therapeutic use Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors -- history PSYCHOLOGY -- Psychopathology -- Depression. SELF-HELP -- Mood Disorders. SELF-HELP -- Depression. Affective disorders -- Chemotherapy Pharmaceutical policy Psychopharmacology Psychotropic drugs Psychotropic drugs industry United States Genre/Form History Form Electronic book ISBN 9780199709335 0199709335 1281825980 9781281825988 9786611825980 6611825983

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