Review
If David Healy's intent is to present a cohesive, thorough, integrated and provocative account of the history of the concept of mania and the evolution of what is currently called bipolar disorder, he is tremendously successful.
(
PsycCRITIQUES 2009)
Healy reminds us that we need to ask ourselves what it means to be ill and what it means to be well.
(Garan Holcombe
California Literary Review 2008)
A learned and polemical volume in the series Biographies of Disease published by the Johns Hopkins University Press... Healy is an intellectual bomb-thrower, a most erudite and clever doctor with an anarchic streak that he cannot quite reconcile with disinterested historical inquiry. He is interesting precisely for the subtle detonations that he sets off in the reader’s mind, rattling the received ideas too comfortably ensconced there.
(Algis Valiunas
New Atlantis 2009)
A powerful political tract. As social history it provides the most detailed available account of the interactions of psychiatry and the world of pharmaceutical manufacturing.
(
Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 2009)
Provides a probing and challenging commentary on the state of contemporary psychiatry.
(Allan Beveridge
British Journal of Psychiatry 2009)
David Healy is indeed an enfant terrible—and a very brave man. I doubt he is on Eli Lilly’s or Pfizer’s Christmas card list.
(
Times Literary Supplement )
Mania is a work that deserves a wide readership.
(Gerald N. Grob, Ph.D.
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences )
Well-written and compelling... I encourage you to read this exceptional book.
(Tom Olson, PhD
Nursing History Review 2010)
The book is a scholarly one [and] Healy's wide knowledge of the facts of the history is impressive.
(Paul Skerritt
Health and History 2009)
[Healy's] work has enriched our historiographic discourse enormously and social historians of medicine can only greet that as good news.
(Eric J. Engstrom
Social History of Medicine 2009)
How did we come to apply such a serious diagnosis to vaguely depressed or irritable adults, to unruly children and to nursing home residents? Is it simply that psychiatric science has progressed and now allows us to detect more easily an illness that had previously been ignored or misunderstood? Healy has another, more cynical explanation: the never-ending expansion of the category of bipolar disorder benefits large pharmaceutical companies eager to sell medications marketed with the disorder in mind.
(Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen
London Review of Books 2010)
A distinct and powerful view of the history of psychiatry that arouses controversy in the best sense of the word. Healy's discussion of the role of drug companies is especially right on the mark.
(Gerald N. Grob, Ph.D., Henry E. Sigerist Professor of the History of Medicine Emeritus at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey )
Well paced, judicious, and extremely well researched, Healy's powerful book deserves a wide readership in and far beyond psychiatry.
(Christopher Lane
Common Knowledge 2012)
From the Back Cover
In this provocative history, David Healy explores how perceptions of illness, if not illnesses themselves, are mutable over time. Drawing heavily on primary sources and supplemented with interviews and insight gained over Healy’s long career, this lucid and engaging narrative of bipolar disorder sheds new light on one of humankind’s most vexing ailments.
"David Healy is indeed an enfant terrible—and a very brave man. I doubt he is on Eli Lilly’s or Pfizer’s Christmas card list."— Times Literary Supplement
"How did we come to apply such a serious diagnosis to vaguely depressed or irritable adults, to unruly children, and to nursing home residents? Is it simply that psychiatric science has progressed and now allows us to detect more easily an illness that had previously been ignored or misunderstood? Healy has another, more cynical explanation: the never-ending expansion of the category of bipolar disorder benefits large pharmaceutical companies eager to sell medications marketed with the disorder in mind." —London Review of Books
"A powerful political tract. As social history it provides the most detailed available account of the interactions of psychiatry and the world of pharmaceutical manufacturing."— Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
"If David Healy's intent is to present a cohesive, thorough, integrated, and provocative account of the history of the concept of mania and the evolution of what is currently called bipolar disorder, he is tremendously successful." —PsycCRITIQUES
