
Mad in America
Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $28.79
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Chris Kayser
-
Timothy Andrés Pabon
-
By:
-
Robert Whitaker
About this listen
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.
©2019 Robert Whitaker (P)2024 Basic BooksListeners also enjoyed...
-
Anatomy of an Epidemic
- Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America
- By: Robert Whitaker
- Narrated by: Ken Kliban
- Length: 13 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this astonishing and startling book, award-winning science and history writer Robert Whitaker investigates a medical mystery: Why has the number of disabled mentally ill in the United States tripled over the past two decades? Every day, 1,100 adults and children are added to the government disability rolls because they have become newly disabled by mental illness, with this epidemic spreading most rapidly among our nations children. What is going on?
-
-
The author does not use a fair scientific approach
- By Michael on 08-15-10
By: Robert Whitaker
-
Unshrunk
- A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance
- By: Laura Delano
- Narrated by: Laura Delano
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At age fourteen, Laura Delano saw her first psychiatrist, who immediately diagnosed her with bipolar disorder and started her on a mood stabilizer and an antidepressant. At school, Delano was elected the class president and earned straight-As and a national squash ranking; at home, she unleashed all the rage and despair she felt, lashing out at her family and locking herself in her bedroom, obsessing over death.
-
-
Powerfully moving
- By Jess on 07-01-25
By: Laura Delano
-
Desperate Remedies
- Psychiatry’s Turbulent Quest to Cure Mental Illness
- By: Andrew Scull
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 18 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For more than two hundred years, disturbances of the mind—the sorts of things that were once called "madness"—have been studied and treated by the medical profession. Mental illness, some insist, is a disease like any other, whose origins can be identified and from which one can be cured. But is this true? In this masterful account of America's quest to understand and treat everything from anxiety to psychosis, one of the most provocative thinkers writing about psychiatry today sheds light on its tumultuous past.
-
-
A Great History but I Have One Big Reservation
- By Jeffrey Scot Minch on 08-02-22
By: Andrew Scull
-
The Myth of Psychotherapy
- Mental Healing as Religion, Rhetoric, and Repression
- By: Thomas Szasz
- Narrated by: Robin Lawson
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Until recent years, “bad” and “immoral” were the terms used to describe people who are now referred to as “sick” and “in need of treatment.” Moral and religious perspective has been replaced by medical and therapeutic rhetoric. It is little wonder why the world is plagued by legions of rapists, drug users, murderers, thieves, and child abusers, all of whom are now referred to as having one form or another of “addiction” and are thus either “sick” or suffering from “mental illness.”
-
-
Dangerously well spoken misinformation
- By Andrew on 09-12-20
By: Thomas Szasz
-
Psychiatry
- The Science of Lies
- By: Thomas Szasz
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 4 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Over four hours of rant, with lack of rationale
- By Michael on 04-11-12
By: Thomas Szasz
-
Mind Fixers
- Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness
- By: Anne Harrington
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 1980s, American psychiatry announced that it was time to toss aside Freudian ideas of mental disorder because the true path to understanding and treating mental illness lay in brain science, biochemistry, and drugs. This sudden call to revolution, however, was not driven by any scientific breakthroughs. Nor was it as unprecedented as it seemed. Why had previous efforts stalled? Was this latest call really any different? In Mind Fixers, Anne Harrington offers the first comprehensive history of the troubled search for the biological basis of mental illness.
-
-
A summary relevant to each of us
- By R3 on 04-28-19
By: Anne Harrington
-
Anatomy of an Epidemic
- Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America
- By: Robert Whitaker
- Narrated by: Ken Kliban
- Length: 13 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this astonishing and startling book, award-winning science and history writer Robert Whitaker investigates a medical mystery: Why has the number of disabled mentally ill in the United States tripled over the past two decades? Every day, 1,100 adults and children are added to the government disability rolls because they have become newly disabled by mental illness, with this epidemic spreading most rapidly among our nations children. What is going on?
-
-
The author does not use a fair scientific approach
- By Michael on 08-15-10
By: Robert Whitaker
-
Unshrunk
- A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance
- By: Laura Delano
- Narrated by: Laura Delano
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At age fourteen, Laura Delano saw her first psychiatrist, who immediately diagnosed her with bipolar disorder and started her on a mood stabilizer and an antidepressant. At school, Delano was elected the class president and earned straight-As and a national squash ranking; at home, she unleashed all the rage and despair she felt, lashing out at her family and locking herself in her bedroom, obsessing over death.
-
-
Powerfully moving
- By Jess on 07-01-25
By: Laura Delano
-
Desperate Remedies
- Psychiatry’s Turbulent Quest to Cure Mental Illness
- By: Andrew Scull
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 18 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For more than two hundred years, disturbances of the mind—the sorts of things that were once called "madness"—have been studied and treated by the medical profession. Mental illness, some insist, is a disease like any other, whose origins can be identified and from which one can be cured. But is this true? In this masterful account of America's quest to understand and treat everything from anxiety to psychosis, one of the most provocative thinkers writing about psychiatry today sheds light on its tumultuous past.
-
-
A Great History but I Have One Big Reservation
- By Jeffrey Scot Minch on 08-02-22
By: Andrew Scull
-
The Myth of Psychotherapy
- Mental Healing as Religion, Rhetoric, and Repression
- By: Thomas Szasz
- Narrated by: Robin Lawson
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Until recent years, “bad” and “immoral” were the terms used to describe people who are now referred to as “sick” and “in need of treatment.” Moral and religious perspective has been replaced by medical and therapeutic rhetoric. It is little wonder why the world is plagued by legions of rapists, drug users, murderers, thieves, and child abusers, all of whom are now referred to as having one form or another of “addiction” and are thus either “sick” or suffering from “mental illness.”
-
-
Dangerously well spoken misinformation
- By Andrew on 09-12-20
By: Thomas Szasz
-
Psychiatry
- The Science of Lies
- By: Thomas Szasz
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 4 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Over four hours of rant, with lack of rationale
- By Michael on 04-11-12
By: Thomas Szasz
-
Mind Fixers
- Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness
- By: Anne Harrington
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 1980s, American psychiatry announced that it was time to toss aside Freudian ideas of mental disorder because the true path to understanding and treating mental illness lay in brain science, biochemistry, and drugs. This sudden call to revolution, however, was not driven by any scientific breakthroughs. Nor was it as unprecedented as it seemed. Why had previous efforts stalled? Was this latest call really any different? In Mind Fixers, Anne Harrington offers the first comprehensive history of the troubled search for the biological basis of mental illness.
-
-
A summary relevant to each of us
- By R3 on 04-28-19
By: Anne Harrington
-
Saving Normal
- An Insider’s Revolt Against out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life
- By: Allen Frances MD
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Right on the money
- By Mentecuerpo on 03-29-19
By: Allen Frances MD
-
Your Consent Is Not Required
- The Rise in Psychiatric Detentions, Forced Treatment, and Abusive Guardianships
- By: Rob Wipond
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Asylums are supposed to be in the past. However, though the buildings were closed, many of the practices lived on. In fact, more law-abiding Americans today are being involuntarily committed and forcibly treated "for their own good" than at any time in history.
-
-
A compelling and comprehensive read on the abuses in modern psychiatry
- By SummerSawe on 02-01-24
By: Rob Wipond
-
Existential Psychotherapy
- By: Irvin D. Yalom
- Narrated by: Douglas James
- Length: 23 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
First published in 1980, Existential Psychotherapy is widely considered to be the foundational text in its field—the first to offer a methodology for helping patients to develop more adaptive responses to life’s core existential dilemmas. In this seminal work, American psychiatrist Irvin Yalom finds the essence of existential psychotherapy and gives it a coherent structure, synthesizing its historical background, core tenets, and usefulness to the practice.
-
-
More pertinent than ever
- By Ana Flores on 02-27-25
By: Irvin D. Yalom
-
The Medicalization of Everyday Life: Selected Essays
- By: Thomas Szasz
- Narrated by: Gary D. MacFadden
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Defining "medicalization" as the perception of nonmedical conditions as medical problems and nondiseases as diseases, Thomas Szasz has devoted much of his career to exposing the dangers of "medicalizing" the conditions of some who simply refuse to conform to society's expectations. Szasz argues that modern psychiatry's tireless ambition to explain the human condition has led to the treatment of life's difficulties and oddities as clinical illnesses rather than as humanity revealed in its fullness.
-
-
good book
- By Michael Ten on 09-09-16
By: Thomas Szasz
-
Turtles All the Way Down
- Vaccine Science and Myth
- By: Anonymous
- Narrated by: Tim Bodnar
- Length: 18 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Turtles All the Way Down: Vaccine Science and Myth will resolve the vaccine question for you, once and for all. By the time you finish, not only will you see the answer clearly for yourself, you will also have the scientific references and specific quotes at your disposal that prove it – more than 1,200 of them – all from mainstream scientific papers and textbooks, the official publications of relevant government agencies, or manufacturers’ documents.
-
-
Antivaxxer playbook
- By Russ on 05-31-25
By: Anonymous
-
The Eurasian Century
- Hot Wars, Cold Wars, and the Making of the Modern Century
- By: Hal Brands
- Narrated by: Tim Fannon
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hal Brands argues that a better understanding of Eurasia's strategic geography can illuminate the contours of rivalry and conflict in today's world. The Eurasian Century explains how revolutions in technology and warfare, and the rise of toxic ideologies of conquest, made Eurasia the center of twentieth-century geopolitics—with pressing implications for the struggles that will define the twenty-first.
-
-
Worth the read.
- By Chip Eckert on 02-24-25
By: Hal Brands
-
White Hot Light
- Twenty-Five Years in Emergency Medicine
- By: Frank Huyler
- Narrated by: Gary Bennett
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the late 1990s, a young physician in Albuquerque, New Mexico, published a stunning memoir of his experiences in the highly charged world of the ER. Presented in a series of powerful, poetic vignettes, The Blood of Strangers became an instant classic. Now, over two decades later, Dr. Frank Huyler delivers another dispatch from the trenches—this time from the perspective of middle age. In portraits visceral, haunting, sometimes surreal, Huyler reveals the gritty reality of medicine practiced on the razor’s edge between life and death.
-
-
Even Better than The Blood of Strangers
- By Elizabeth Darcy on 10-14-20
By: Frank Huyler
-
Chasing Shadows
- My Life Tracking the Great White Shark
- By: Greg Skomal, Ret Talbot
- Narrated by: Jamie Renell
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With its quaint villages, local restaurants serving up lobster rolls, and miles and miles of warm, sandy beaches, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is famous for being America’s carefree seaside getaway. But in August 2012, the first confirmed shark attack in almost eighty years occurred in the region. As shark sightings quickly began to increase on Cape Cod and elsewhere and large beachside billboards warning about the growing shark population became a common sight, a boogie boarder died after being attacked by a great white shark in Cape Cod’s shallow waters.
-
-
Not just a boy who loves sharks!
- By Marianne O'Sullivan on 08-12-23
By: Greg Skomal, and others
-
Strangers to Ourselves
- Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us
- By: Rachel Aviv
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a powerful and gripping debut, Rachel Aviv raises fundamental questions about how we understand ourselves in periods of crisis and distress. Drawing on deep, original reporting as well as unpublished journals and memoirs, Aviv writes about people who have come up against the limits of psychiatric explanations for who they are. Animated by a profound sense of empathy, Aviv’s exploration is refracted through her own account of living in a hospital ward at the age of six and meeting a fellow patient with whom her life runs parallel—until it no longer does.
-
-
Just Falls Short ...
- By Jenny Jenkins on 01-15-23
By: Rachel Aviv
-
Cunk on Everything
- The Encyclopedia Philomena
- By: Philomena Cunk
- Narrated by: Philomena Cunk
- Length: 5 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Once in a blue moon, a book comes along that changes the world. The Origin of Species. War and Peace. 1984. And now, Cunk on Everything: The Encyclopedia Philomena, by Philomena Cunk. Philomena Cunk is one of the greatest thinkers of the 21st century, and in Cunk on Everything she turns her attention to our biggest issue: why are there so many books? Wouldn't it be better if there was just one? This is that book—an encyclopedia of all human knowledge, delving into not only life's greatest mysteries but our most important political figures and cultural touchstones.
-
-
Very funny!
- By Scott E on 09-28-23
By: Philomena Cunk
-
Cracked
- The Unhappy Truth About Psychiatry
- By: James Davies
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In an effort to enlighten a new generation about its growing reliance on psychiatry, this illuminating volume investigates why psychiatry has become the fastest-growing medical field in history; why psychiatric drugs are now more widely prescribed than ever before; and why psychiatry, without solid scientific justification, keeps expanding the number of mental disorders it believes to exist. This revealing volume shows that these issues can be explained by one startling fact: in recent decades psychiatry has become so motivated by power that it has put the pursuit of pharmaceutical riches above its patients' well being.
-
-
Author is an idiot
- By Steve on 02-25-20
By: James Davies
-
Divergent Mind
- Thriving in a World That Wasn’t Designed For You
- By: Jenara Nerenberg
- Narrated by: Tegan Ashton Cohan
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A paradigm-shifting study of neurodivergent women - those with ADHD, autism, synesthesia, high sensitivity, and sensory processing disorder - exploring why these traits are overlooked in women and how society benefits from allowing their unique strengths to flourish.
-
-
Provided no insight
- By Somebody on 06-24-20
By: Jenara Nerenberg
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Anatomy of an Epidemic
- Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America
- By: Robert Whitaker
- Narrated by: Ken Kliban
- Length: 13 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this astonishing and startling book, award-winning science and history writer Robert Whitaker investigates a medical mystery: Why has the number of disabled mentally ill in the United States tripled over the past two decades? Every day, 1,100 adults and children are added to the government disability rolls because they have become newly disabled by mental illness, with this epidemic spreading most rapidly among our nations children. What is going on?
-
-
The author does not use a fair scientific approach
- By Michael on 08-15-10
By: Robert Whitaker
-
Unshrunk
- A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance
- By: Laura Delano
- Narrated by: Laura Delano
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At age fourteen, Laura Delano saw her first psychiatrist, who immediately diagnosed her with bipolar disorder and started her on a mood stabilizer and an antidepressant. At school, Delano was elected the class president and earned straight-As and a national squash ranking; at home, she unleashed all the rage and despair she felt, lashing out at her family and locking herself in her bedroom, obsessing over death.
-
-
Powerfully moving
- By Jess on 07-01-25
By: Laura Delano
-
The Myth of Mental Illness
- Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct
- By: Thomas S. Szasz MD
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Thomas Szasz's classic book revolutionized thinking about the nature of the psychiatric profession and the moral implications of its practices. By diagnosing unwanted behavior as mental illness, psychiatrists, Szasz argues, absolve individuals of responsibility for their actions and instead blame their alleged illness. He also critiques Freudian psychology as a pseudoscience and warns against the dangerous overreach of psychiatry into all aspects of modern life.
-
-
Good format for initial exposure to the material.
- By Anonymous User on 11-29-21
-
The Laws of Medicine
- By: Siddhartha Mukherjee
- Narrated by: Santino Fontana
- Length: 1 hr and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Brimming with fascinating historical details and modern medical wonders, this important audiobook is a fascinating glimpse into the struggles and "eureka!" moments that people outside of the medical profession rarely see. Written with Dr. Mukherjee's signature eloquence and passionate prose, The Laws of Medicine is a critical book not just for those in the medical profession but for everyone who is moved to better understand how their health and well-being are being treated.
-
-
Insightful, sincere and succinct. Not Mukherjee's best.
- By Saurav on 12-20-15
-
Saving Normal
- An Insider’s Revolt Against out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life
- By: Allen Frances MD
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Right on the money
- By Mentecuerpo on 03-29-19
By: Allen Frances MD
-
Crazy Like Us
- The Globalization of the American Psyche
- By: Ethan Watters
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America has been the world leader in generating new mental health treatments and modern theories of the human psyche. We export our psychopharmaceuticals packaged with the certainty that our biomedical knowledge will relieve the suffering and stigma of mental illness. We categorize disorders, thereby defining mental illness and health, and then parade these seemingly scientific certainties in front of the world.
-
-
He is a reporter...
- By Briana on 05-07-18
By: Ethan Watters
-
Anatomy of an Epidemic
- Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America
- By: Robert Whitaker
- Narrated by: Ken Kliban
- Length: 13 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this astonishing and startling book, award-winning science and history writer Robert Whitaker investigates a medical mystery: Why has the number of disabled mentally ill in the United States tripled over the past two decades? Every day, 1,100 adults and children are added to the government disability rolls because they have become newly disabled by mental illness, with this epidemic spreading most rapidly among our nations children. What is going on?
-
-
The author does not use a fair scientific approach
- By Michael on 08-15-10
By: Robert Whitaker
-
Unshrunk
- A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance
- By: Laura Delano
- Narrated by: Laura Delano
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At age fourteen, Laura Delano saw her first psychiatrist, who immediately diagnosed her with bipolar disorder and started her on a mood stabilizer and an antidepressant. At school, Delano was elected the class president and earned straight-As and a national squash ranking; at home, she unleashed all the rage and despair she felt, lashing out at her family and locking herself in her bedroom, obsessing over death.
-
-
Powerfully moving
- By Jess on 07-01-25
By: Laura Delano
-
The Myth of Mental Illness
- Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct
- By: Thomas S. Szasz MD
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Thomas Szasz's classic book revolutionized thinking about the nature of the psychiatric profession and the moral implications of its practices. By diagnosing unwanted behavior as mental illness, psychiatrists, Szasz argues, absolve individuals of responsibility for their actions and instead blame their alleged illness. He also critiques Freudian psychology as a pseudoscience and warns against the dangerous overreach of psychiatry into all aspects of modern life.
-
-
Good format for initial exposure to the material.
- By Anonymous User on 11-29-21
-
The Laws of Medicine
- By: Siddhartha Mukherjee
- Narrated by: Santino Fontana
- Length: 1 hr and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Brimming with fascinating historical details and modern medical wonders, this important audiobook is a fascinating glimpse into the struggles and "eureka!" moments that people outside of the medical profession rarely see. Written with Dr. Mukherjee's signature eloquence and passionate prose, The Laws of Medicine is a critical book not just for those in the medical profession but for everyone who is moved to better understand how their health and well-being are being treated.
-
-
Insightful, sincere and succinct. Not Mukherjee's best.
- By Saurav on 12-20-15
-
Saving Normal
- An Insider’s Revolt Against out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life
- By: Allen Frances MD
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Right on the money
- By Mentecuerpo on 03-29-19
By: Allen Frances MD
-
Crazy Like Us
- The Globalization of the American Psyche
- By: Ethan Watters
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America has been the world leader in generating new mental health treatments and modern theories of the human psyche. We export our psychopharmaceuticals packaged with the certainty that our biomedical knowledge will relieve the suffering and stigma of mental illness. We categorize disorders, thereby defining mental illness and health, and then parade these seemingly scientific certainties in front of the world.
-
-
He is a reporter...
- By Briana on 05-07-18
By: Ethan Watters
-
The Emperor’s New Drugs
- Exploding the Antidepressant Myth
- By: Irving Kirsch PhD
- Narrated by: Richard Powers
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Do antidepressants work, or are they no better than placebos? Like his colleagues, Irving Kirsch spent years referring patients to psychiatrists to have their depression treated with drugs. Eventually, however, he decided to investigate for himself just how effective the drugs actually were. With 15 years of research, Kirsch demonstrates that what everyone “knew” about antidepressants is wrong; what the medical community considered a cornerstone of psychiatric treatment is little more than a faulty consensus.
-
-
A must-read!
- By Frank Dunford on 12-22-18
-
Control
- The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics
- By: Adam Rutherford
- Narrated by: Greg Patmore
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Control is a book about what geneticist Adam Rutherford calls “a defining idea of the twentieth century.” Inspired by Darwin’s ideas about evolution, eugenics arose in Victorian England as a theory for improving the British population, and quickly spread to America. With disarming wit and scientific precision, Rutherford explains why eugenics still figures prominently in the twenty-first century, despite its genocidal past. And he confronts insidious recurring questions, revealing the intellectual bankruptcy of the idea, and the scientific impossibility of its realization.
-
-
Excellent 2023 update on genetics
- By Roy on 01-11-25
By: Adam Rutherford
-
The Mapmaker's Wife
- A True Tale of Love, Murder, and Survival in the Amazon
- By: Robert Whitaker
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the early years of the 18th century, a band of French scientists set off on a daring, decade-long expedition to South America in a race to measure the precise shape of the earth. Like Lewis and Clark's exploration of the American West, their incredible mission revealed the mysteries of a little-known continent to a world hungry for discovery. Scaling 16,000-foot mountains in the Peruvian Andes, and braving jaguars, pumas, insects, and vampire bats in the jungle, the scientists barely completed their mission.
-
-
Good. Could have been great…
- By Crys H on 07-01-22
By: Robert Whitaker
-
Mind Fixers
- Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness
- By: Anne Harrington
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 1980s, American psychiatry announced that it was time to toss aside Freudian ideas of mental disorder because the true path to understanding and treating mental illness lay in brain science, biochemistry, and drugs. This sudden call to revolution, however, was not driven by any scientific breakthroughs. Nor was it as unprecedented as it seemed. Why had previous efforts stalled? Was this latest call really any different? In Mind Fixers, Anne Harrington offers the first comprehensive history of the troubled search for the biological basis of mental illness.
-
-
A summary relevant to each of us
- By R3 on 04-28-19
By: Anne Harrington
-
Psychonauts
- Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind
- By: Mike Jay
- Narrated by: Rachel Perry
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Until the twentieth century, scientists investigating the effects of drugs on the mind did so by experimenting on themselves. Vivid descriptions of drug experiences sparked insights across the mind sciences, pharmacology, medicine, and philosophy. But after 1900 drugs were increasingly viewed as a social problem, and the long tradition of self-experimentation began to disappear. Mike Jay brilliantly recovers a lost intellectual tradition of drug-taking that fed the birth of psychology, the discovery of the unconscious, and the emergence of modernism.
-
-
Outstanding
- By Austin on 07-20-24
By: Mike Jay
-
The Great Pretender
- The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness
- By: Susannah Cahalan
- Narrated by: Christie Moreau, Susannah Cahalan
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For centuries, doctors have struggled to define mental illness - how do you diagnose it, how do you treat it, how do you even know what it is? In search of an answer, in the 1970s a Stanford psychologist named David Rosenhan and seven other people - sane, normal, well-adjusted members of society - went undercover into asylums around America to test the legitimacy of psychiatry's labels. Rosenhan's watershed study broke open the field of psychiatry, closing down institutions and changing mental health diagnosis forever.
-
-
Important story of fraud really well told
- By ReallyNelie on 12-27-19
By: Susannah Cahalan
-
An Unquiet Mind
- A Memoir of Moods and Madness
- By: Kay Redfield Jamison
- Narrated by: Kay Redfield Jamison
- Length: 2 hrs and 46 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dr. Jamison is one of the foremost authorities on manic-depressive (bipolar) illness; she has also experienced it firsthand. For even while she was pursuing her career in academic medicine, Jamison found herself succumbing to the same exhilarating highs and catastrophic depressions that afflicted many of her patients, as her disorder launched her into ruinous spending sprees, episodes of violence, and an attempted suicide.
-
-
It Says Unabridged. That is incorrect.
- By Casey Wagner on 10-17-11
-
Blind Spots
- When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health
- By: Marty Makary MD
- Narrated by: Marty Makary MD
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Blind Spots, Dr. Makary explores the latest research on critical topics ranging from the microbiome to childbirth to nutrition and longevity and more, revealing the biggest blind spots of modern medicine and tackling the most urgent yet unsung issues in our $4.5 trillion health care ecosystem. The path to medical mishaps can be absurd, entertaining, and jaw-dropping—but the truth is essential to our health.
-
-
Hindsight is 20/20
- By LawyerLady on 10-09-24
By: Marty Makary MD
-
The Radium Girls
- The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women
- By: Kate Moore
- Narrated by: Angela Brazil
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The year was 1917. As a war raged across the world, young American women flocked to work, painting watches, clocks, and military dials with a special luminous substance made from radium. It was a fun job, lucrative and glamorous - the girls themselves shone brightly in the dark, covered head to toe in the dust from the paint. They were the radium girls. As the years passed, the women began to suffer from mysterious and crippling illnesses.
-
-
A simple way to improve the robotic narration
- By B. C. French on 06-07-17
By: Kate Moore
-
I Hate You - Don't Leave Me: Third Edition
- Understanding the Borderline Personality
- By: Jerold J. Kreisman, Hal Straus
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After more than three decades as the essential guide to borderline personality disorder (BPD), the third edition of I Hate You - Don’t Leave Me now reflects the most up-to-date research that has opened doors to the neurobiological, genetic, and developmental roots of the disorder, as well as connections between BPD and substance abuse, sexual abuse, post-traumatic stress syndrome, ADHD, and eating disorders.
-
-
Antiquated
- By Jace on 10-13-21
By: Jerold J. Kreisman, and others
-
No More Tears
- The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson
- By: Gardiner Harris
- Narrated by: Gardiner Harris
- Length: 14 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One day in 2004, Gardiner Harris, a pharmaceutical reporter for The New York Times, was early for a flight and sat down at an airport bar. He struck up a conversation with the woman on the barstool next to him, who happened to be a drug sales rep for Johnson & Johnson. Her horrific story about unethical sales practices and the devastating impact they’d had on her family fundamentally changed the nature of how Harris would cover the company—and the entire pharmaceutical industry—for the Times.
-
-
Absolute Must Read!
- By Libbiec on 04-21-25
By: Gardiner Harris
-
Sociopath
- A Memoir
- By: Patric Gagne Ph.D.
- Narrated by: Patric Gagne Ph.D.
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Patric Gagne realized she made others uncomfortable before she started kindergarten. Something about her caused people to react in a way she didn’t understand. She suspected it was because she didn’t feel things the way other people did. Emotions like fear, guilt, and empathy eluded her. For the most part, she felt nothing. And she didn’t like the way that “nothing” felt.
-
-
Fascinating and Perfect Performance!
- By ScoobaRubio on 04-05-24
Mental Illness in America - An American Tragedy
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.