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Sat 07 Jul 2009Tackling mental illness head on
HEALTH:Doctoring the Mind: Is Our Current Treatment of Madness Really Any Good?By Richard Bentall Allen Lane, 349pp. £22
IN DOCTORING the Mind: Is the Current Treatment of Madness Really Any Good?Richard Bentall does not mince his words. Conventional psychiatry, he charges, has failed “because it has been profoundly unscientific and at the same time unsuccessful at helping some of the most distressed and vulnerable people in our society”. This charge is all the more startling given the much-heralded new approach to modern psychiatry at the end of the 20th century – mental illness finally understood as a genetically influenced disorder of brain chemistry that could be successfully treated by a new generation of drugs.
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