- Hardcover: 305 pages
- Publisher: The Free Press (25 Aug 1997)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0684822806
- ISBN-13: 978-0684822808
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.7 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,041,086 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
What makes a person crazy? Nowadays it's the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV). For many mental health professionals, the DSM is an indispensable diagnostic tool, and as the standard reference book for psychiatrists and other psychotherapists everywhere, it has had an inestimable influence on the way we view other human beings. Deciding what we consider sane and normal, and reflecting the prejudices and values of each generation, it's not surprising that the DSM has become a battleground. But things have taken a strange turn. The fight is no longer about who escapes DSM labeling, but rather, how a person can qualify for a diagnosis. Now, mental health professionals must label their clients as pathological in order for them to be reimbursed by their insurance companies. This disturbing trend toward making us crazy when we are simply grappling with everyday concerns has even worse public implications. In Making Us Crazy, Professors Kutchins and Kirk reveal how the DSM is used to assassinate character and slander the opposition, often for political or monetary gain. None of this misuse bodes well for the future of mental health. Even children are being overdiagnosed and given drugs they don't need. Making Us Crazy is the long-needed antidote to the claims made about the DSM. Kutchins and Kirk argue that the DSM is not the scientifically based reference work it purports to be, but rather a collection of current phobias and popular mores.
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
When Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment before a Senate committee, the televised proceedings captured the attention of the American public as few events have since Watergate. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
30 of 32 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Attention all mental health practitioners! Do you strive to be "evidence based" in all that you do? Do you accept only scientific studies as constituting "evidence" on topics of diagnosis and treatment?
Most importantly, do you choose to refer to the DSM-IV (or earlier editions) to make definitive, scientific diagnoses?
Well, read this book to have your blinkers removed! The authors (a professor of social work and a professor of social care) argue persuasively that a large number of the identified behavioural disorders are defined because of political, social and economic reasons, sometimes with no scientific backing at all - sometimes even in direct contradiction to scientific evidence available.
This book however is no "anti-psychiatry" rant. Instead, the authors acknowledge the "reality" of mental illness, and the pain and suffering that it causes to many people and their families.
What they do object to is the increasing "medicalisation" of behaviours which never before have been considered "disorders" and which stigmatises the individual AND significantly alters peoples' rights in areas such as the courts and employment.
Don't unthinkingly refer to the DSM in the assumption that it is a valid, scientific resource...read this book and have your assumptions about mental disorders challenged.
15 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This was on my wish list and some kind soul bought it for me. This was a book I couldn't put down. Some of the articles are disturbing as some things we take for granted about mental illness appear to have been made up by social and environmental stigma. SPOOKY!!!!
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
7 reviews
42 of 45 people found the following review helpful
Important Book, if not always an easy read
27 Sep 2000
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
For those of us who eagerly consume critiques of the mental health industry, this book is not necessarily what we have come to expect. I often expect what amounts to a quick adrenalin rush, with horror stories of abuse by the system driving me to the barricades. Kutchins and Kirk do not provide a quick rush, nor even a quick read. But when you find yourself on the barricades, they do give you the ammunition.
This is a very detailed social/political history of the DSM, in and out of committee meetings and individual correspondence, providing the evidence of the point made so well by others such as Kaplan: that the DSM is in fact a political document, evolving to suit conflicting political and financial interests. More than a story of good guys and bad guys, much of this history includes the sad moral of unintended consequences, as in the fight to get PTSD into the DSM.
I teach undergraduate psychology, and I applaud the authors' coherent explanations of technical issues such as reliablity and validity of assessment. My teaching experience informs me that this is a tedious exercise for most students, and, I assume, for the educated lay readership to whom Kutchins and Kirk appeal. But it is critical to the central theme of the story: the misuse of the aura of science to mask a fundamentally political process.
Are there victims and villains of this process? Of course, and they are the usual villains: a system of managed care, and a variety of bureaucracies and agencies pursuing government funding, grants and influence based on ultimately manipulated numbers. And the usual victims: the over-labelled, over-prescribed and stigmatized recipients of "care".
The story wanders through so many mazes that a reader may lose the thread: PTSD, homosexuality, female masochism, borderline personality disorder. Each story differs in who started the process of getting a diagnosis in or out of the DSM, the motivation for doing so, the outcome of the fight, and the specific consequences. Fortunately, the authors provide an excellent summary in the last chapter, and weave those threads back together.
More than once in reading this book, I found myself thinking that every political or social issue fight needs its policy wonks. Kutchins and Kirk may be our wonks.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Well argued, Well Written, A Work With Vast Implications For the Mental Health Industry
9 Dec 2005
Format:Paperback
This expose represents the most thorough documentation that psychiatry is a psuedo-science to date. The proof that psychiatry is no more (and possibly much less) than the mere sum of its internal politics is amply provided by the authors in the form of personal correspondance between the brightest minds and most powerful leaders of the discipline. For the impatient or the semi-literate, a long, slow read lies ahead. For those with an eye for detail, prepare to witness the unraveling of the most influential scientific institution in America, decades in the making. According to this book shouting matches, voting, back door meetings and boycotts were the "data" that came to comprise what most people believe is a scientific definition of mental illness, the DSM-IV in a process that better resembles the way a legsilature works as opposed to scientific research. The authors take great care to not inflate the value of their findings. The book is written by a journalist and a social worker and was not vetted or peer reviewed by Scientologists, angry parents of drugged kids, or psychiatrists--and this provides the most convincing evidence of its overall credibility. Really, this is a rare work of valid, honest journalism covering a subject that is mostly the domain of anonymous hotheads and arrogant "experts" all of whom are making claims without evidence in service of their own personal or professional objectives. In this sea of muckety-muck, this book is an island of reason.
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful
An extremely important book
29 Jan 2006
Format:Hardcover
Those who give this book a one star rating most likely have interests that are being threatened. Drug company representatives? Drug prescribers? So, pull down the average rating and reduce the number of people who buy it. It's what the republicans try to do to Al Franken's books.
The book conveys facts in a neutral, understated tone, and from those facts develops reasonable beliefs. Which ideas did you disagree with? That the diagnostic categories lack reliability and validity? That DSM has been shaped more by special interests than by science? That the criteria for each diagnosis are purely arbitrary?
Read the book. You'll think twice about letting someone you care about be diagnosed.
The book conveys facts in a neutral, understated tone, and from those facts develops reasonable beliefs. Which ideas did you disagree with? That the diagnostic categories lack reliability and validity? That DSM has been shaped more by special interests than by science? That the criteria for each diagnosis are purely arbitrary?
Read the book. You'll think twice about letting someone you care about be diagnosed.
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