One blog that is worth paying close attention to in this space is Mad in America: History Science and Psychiatry, a comprehensive look at mental illness treatment and pharmaceuticals written by Robert Whitaker, author of a number of books on the subject.

Whitaker’s eponymous Mad in America: Bad Medicine, Bad Science and the Continued Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill, published in 2010, was called, “One of the most disturbing, consequential works of investigative journalism I’ve read in a long time. Perhaps ever,” by John Horgan in Scientific American. Whitaker’s more recent Anatomy of an Epidemic, from 2011, examines whether psychiatric drugs are behind the meteoric rise in mental illness in the United States over the past fifty years. “In 1955, there were 355,000 adults in state and county mental hospitals with psychiatric diagnosis. During the next three decades (the era of the first generation psychiatric drugs), the number of disabled mentally ill rose to 1.25 million,” he writes in one post on the blog. The book attempts to answer that question—are doctor-prescribed pharmaceuticals inducing mental illness?—with a look at the science, and the blog is meant to provide readers with access to the studies that the book examines as well as to provide ongoing coverage of news on mental illness treatment, pharmaceutical company malfeasance and drug side effects in the U.S. Continue reading →