PsychRights^®
                   Law Project for
              Psychiatric Rights

Suggested Reading

General

• Free Download: Harm Reduction Guide to Coming off Psychiatric Drugs
• Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, by Robert Whitaker.
• Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill (2001)by award-winning Robert Whitaker is the book to read to understand what is really going on with psychiatric medications.  
• Agnes's Jacket: A Psychologist's Search for the Meaning of Madness, by Gail Hornstein, PhD.  There are very few books by people who have not experienced the mental illness system from the wrong side of the locked doors who have been able to accurately convey what it is like.  Mad in America is one and Agnes's Jacket another.  This is no doubt due to Dr. Hornstein's life-long interest in first person narratives of people who have experienced madness.  In Agnes's Jacket, Dr. Hornstein has used various threads, all from the voices of patients or former patients, to stitch together a rich embroidery of history, hope, recovery, and madness, the latter of which is mostly society's response to people experiencing these phenomena.
• Community Mental Health: A Practical Guide (1994) by Loren Mosher and Lorenzo Burti is an incredible book that is exactly what it says it is: a practical guide to effective mental health services.  This no-nonsense, but very practical book includes sections that one doesn't expect.  However, when you are done with this book, you will know how a mental health system should be organized if the goal is to get the maximum number of people better as contributing members of society.
• The Myth of the Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment, by Joanna Moncrieff, is a meticulously researched and presented analysis of the lack of science behind current psychiatric drug regimes and how we got here.
• Soteria: Through Madness to Deliverance, by Loren Mosher and Voyce Hendrix with Deborah Fort (2004), provides an intimate day to day look at the Soteria-House alternative to psychiatric hospitalization, which proved that a safe environment with empathic helpers who were not freaked out by people's madness resulted in far better outcomes for people than standard hospital treatment with neuroleptics.  This book is an easy read, is entirely absorbing, yet provides a wealth of information on how such an alternative can be put together.  It also posits the key ingredients for success.
• "Rethinking Psychiatric Drugs: A Guide to Informed Consent," by Grace E. Jackson, M.D., published in late July, 2005, is the definitive work in our view regarding the drugs that are covered.
• Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia: The Treatment of Choice (Jason Aronson,1996), by Bertram P. Karon and Gary R. Vandenbos, describes the essential elements for successful treatment through psychotherapy of people diagnosed with schizophrenia  from the authors' personal experience as well as present the seminal study on the overwhelming advantage of psychotherapy to medication when performed by motivated therapists with relevant training and experience.
• Let Them Eat Prozac: The Unhealthy Relationship Between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Depression (Medicine, Culture, and History), by David Healy (2006).  This is a fascination, but disturbing, look behind the scenes look at research, drug approvals and litigation of an unsafe drug by one of the most preeminent scholars of psychopharmacology in the world.
• From Placebo to Panacea: Putting Psychiatric Drugs to the Test (1997), Seymour Fisher and Roger Greenberg editors is a very rigorous academic review of the research regarding psychiatric drugs finding there is inadequate scientific information to conclude that psychoactive drugs are substantially more effective than placebos.  It is pricey ($125)
• Models of Madness: Psychological, Social and Biological Approaches to Schizophrenia, by John Read (Editor).  In this book various contributing authors demonstrate that hallucinations and delusions are understandable reactions to life events and circumstances rather than symptoms of a supposed genetic predisposition or biological disturbance.
• Dante's Cure, by Dr. Dan Dorman is a compelling true account of a young woman's descent into psychosis and then, through, hard work, understanding and, most importantly, having a psychiatrist willing to spend the time and have a true caring relationship, back from madness.  Interview with Dr. Dorman.
• The Hidden Prejudice: Mental Disability on Trial, by Professor Michael L. Perlin, is the definitive work on the way people diagnosed with mental illness are treated in the courts.  Prof. Perlin discusses how "sanism," which is like racism against people with mental illness, and "pretextuality," which is an excuse to ignore faulty evidence on the pretext of improving society creates a pattern of prejudice against people diagnosed with mental illness that keeps them from receiving equal treatment under the law.
• Books by Peter Breggin, M.D. (and collaborators)
  • Medication Madness.
  • Toxic Psychiatry: Why Therapy, Empathy, and Love Must Replace the Drugs, Electroshock, and Biochemical Theories of the New Psychiatry (1994) is Dr. Breggin's seminal work exposing what psychiatric treatments really do to patients and how the psychiatric profession became so beholden to the pharmaceutical industry.
  • Your Drug May be Your Problem: How and Why to Stop Taking Psychiatric Medications (2000) by Peter R Breggin., MD and David Cohen, Phd  not only does what it says, but is a wonderful resource to quickly look up most commonly prescribed psychiatric drugs.  One can go to the index and find out where the main effects, side effects and withdrawal effects are described.
  • Brain Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry: Drugs, Electroshock, and the Psychopharmaceutical Complex  (2007) by Dr. Peter Breggin is an updated version of his 1997, chock full of information and analysis about psychiatric treatments.
  • Talking Back to Ritalin: What Doctors Aren't Telling You About Stimulants and ADHD (2001) by Peter R. Breggin, Dick Scruggs
  •  The Anti-Depressant Fact Book: What Your Doctor Won't Tell You About Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa, and Luvox (2001) by Peter R. Breggin, M.D.
• Schizophrenia: A Scientific Delusion, by Mary Boyle, Ph.D.
• Commonsense Rebellion by Bruce E. Levine.
• The Creation of Psychopharmacology (2002) by David Healy.
• They Say You’re Crazy: How the World’s Most Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Who’s Normal, by Paula Caplan, PhD.
•  To Redeem One Person Is To Redeem The World : A Life of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (2000) by Gail Hornstein.  Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, the classically trained psychoanalyst, escaped Nazi Germany to become a leading force in the treatment of schizophrenia with psychotherapy.  This meticulously researched book by Gail Hornstein brings Dr. Fromm-Reichmann back to life, describing how she was instrumental in furthering understanding of how to help people with schizophrenia through her work at the world famous Chestnut Lodge where she worked with Joanne Greenberg to bring her back from her escape to fantasy that is schizophrenia.  In this process, Dr. Fromm-Reichmann told Joanne, "I never promised you a rose garden" about how life would be upon her return to reality.  This phrase became a best-selling book (see below), a hit movie and has become part of our idiom.
• Blaming the Brain : The Truth About Drugs and Mental Health (1998) by Elliot Valenstein.
• Creating Mental Illness (2002) by Allan V. Horwitz, sociologist, takes an in-depth look from a sociological perspective at how normal behavior has been pathologized by the psychiatric profession and pharmaceutical companies.
• Punishing The Patient: How Psychiatrists Misunderstand and Mistreat Schizophrenia - Richard, Ph.D. Gosden
• Blaming Our Genes: Why Mental Illness Can't Be Inherited by Ty C. Colbert, Ph.D.
• Rape of the Soul: How the Chemical Imbalance Model of Modern Psychiatry has Failed its Patients by Ty C. Colbert, Ph.D
• Users and Abusers of Psychiatry: A Critical Look at Psychiatric Practice by Lucy Johnstone 
• Mental Illness: Opposing Viewpoints by Tamara L. Roleff (Editor), Laura K. Egendorf (Editor)
• Natural Healing for Schizophreniza: A Compendium of Nutritional Methods by Eva Edelman
• Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted by Thomas S. Szasz

Children

• Drugging Our Children: How Profiteers Are Pushing Antipsychotics on Our Youngest, and What We Can Do to Stop It, by Sharna Olfman, Brent Dean Robbins (Editors).
• The ADHD Fraud: How Psychiatry Makes "Patients" of Normal Children, by Fred A. Baughman Jr. MD with Craig Hovey is somewhat polemical, but is jammed pack with valuable information about how American children's futures are being subordinated to schools' desire for ruly classroms and sacrificed on the alter of pharmaceutical profits.
• Bipolar Children: Cutting-Edge Controversy, Insights, and Research (Childhood in America), by Sharna Olfman (Editor).
• Kids Caught in the Psychiatric Maelstrom: How Pathological Labels and "Therapeutic" Drugs Hurt Children and Families, by Elizabeth Root.

Outstanding Books by People Who Have Experienced Psychosis

• Doctors of Deception: What They Don't Want You to Know About Shock Treatment, by Linda Andre 
• A Fight to Be:  A Psychologist's Experience from Both Sides of the Locked Door, by Ronald Bassman, PhD.  The title of this book both says it all and doesn't give a clue as to the depth of this book.  This is a book that shows not only that a diagnosis of serious mental illness is not necessarily a one-way street to a greatly diminished life, but also that it can be a springboard to a fuller one.
• 5150: One Who Flew Into the Cuckoo's Nest, by Kathi Stringer.  This is an extraordinary and compelling account of abuse at the hands of the mental health system and a testament to the human spirit.  Kathi Stringer has been subjected to more abuse than it seems possible anyone can endure, but emerges from true hell to help others.  Grippingly written, this book uniquely intersperses hospital progress notes with the narrative and gives an objection by objection account of legal proceedings by a lawyer really fighting for her client.  This is a real world account by someone labeled crazy who is everything but.
• Freud's Taboo, by Francesca Spiegel.  Drama script, show of absurdities behind the closed doors of psychiatric clinics, hospitals, and in outpatient lives under drug regimens. A short play.
• Alternatives Beyond Psychiatry. (Ex)users and survivors of psychiatry, therapists, psychiatrists, lawyers, social scientists and relatives report about their alternative work, their objectives and successes, their individual and collective experiences. The book highlights alternatives beyond psychiatry, current possibilities of self-help for individuals experiencing madness, and strategies toward implementing humane treatment.
• Coming off Psychiatric Drugs: Successful Withdrawal from Neuroleptics, Antidepressants, Lithium, Carbamazepine and Tranquilizers, Peter Lehmann (Ed.)
• I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, by Joanne Greenberg (originally under the pseudonym of Hannah Green) is the gripping true account, written as fiction, of a young woman's triumph over schizophrenia at the world famous Chestnut Lodge with Frieda Fromm-Reichmann. 
• Escape From Psychiatry by Clover.
• How to Become a Schizophrenic: The Case Against Biological Psychiatry by John Modrow is not only a haunting and compelling account of how the author became "schizophrenic," but is also a well-researched and inherently unassailable analysis of the general process.
• "What Difference Does It Make?" (The Journey Of A Soul Survivor) by Wendy Funk, Irit Shimrat (Editor) is a bone-chilling first person true story account of a woman who went to a doctor for a cold and got caught up in the mental health system.  This is a short book with large print that will have a very large impact on the reader.
• Judi Chamberlin's seminal 1978 work On Our Own: Patient-Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System is now available again at the National Empowerment Center.  This is Judi's story. It tells of her experiences and lessons she has learned. It makes a compelling case for patient controlled services; a real alternative to the institutions that destroy the confident independence of so many. This is a work of great hope and optimism. Judi Chamberlain argues for what can be done.
• Irit Shimrat's "Call Me Crazy: Stories from the Mad Movement", from Canada, is another psychiatric survivor movement classic.  It is out of print, but there are used copies available.
• Mad Pride: A Celebration of Mad Culture by Robert Dellar (Editor) is a marvelous series of short pieces by psychiatric survivors (and not) from the UK.  We can't help but reproduce the following quote:

  A Celts book in a second-hand bookshop gave me inspiration.  My Celtic roots were drawing me in.  I especially like a story where a tribe of Celts sacked Rome.  Their secret weapon was to put lemon juice in their long hair, which  bleached it.  But what really shook up the Romans was the fact that the Celts would strip off naked when they went into battle and run at them with a blood-curdling roar.  This technique definitely captured my imagination, and I have to say that I've occasionally repeated it in psychiatric institutions when the staff shout "breakfast."  A nurse once dropped the cornflakes in fright.  Needless to say, I got an injection for breakfast

•  A Gift of Stories: Discovering How to Deal with Mental Illness by Julie Leibrich presents the power of personal stories in this touching book.
• Insanity Inside Out: The personal story behind the landmark Supreme Court decision by Kenneth Donaldson
• Bibliography of First-Person Narratives of Madness by Gail Hornstein.

Last modified 3/21/2012
Copyright © 2003-2012 Law Project for Psychiatric Rights. All Rights Reserved