Psychiatry Under the Influence investigates how the influence of pharmaceutical money and guild interests has corrupted the behavior of the American Psychiatric Association and academic psychiatry during the past 35 years. The book documents how the psychiatric establishment regularly misled the American public about what was known about the biology of mental disorders, the validity of psychiatric diagnoses, and the safety and efficacy of its drugs. It also looks at how these two corrupting influences encouraged the expansion of diagnostic boundaries and the creation of biased clinical practice guidelines. This corruption has led to significant social injury, and in particular, a societal lack of informed consent regarding the use of psychiatric drugs, and the pathologizing of normal behaviors in children and adults.

About the Authors

Robert Whitaker is the author of five books, two of which—Mad in America, Anatomy of an Epidemic, and Psychiatry Under the Influence—tell of histories of psychiatry, and of its treatments. Anatomy of an Epidemic won the Investigative Reporters and Editors book award for best investigative journalism in 2010. He is a former Fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University, USA.

Lisa Cosgrove is Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA and a Fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University, USA.  She is also a clinical psychologist. She has co-edited and co-authored casebooks on the ethical and medico-legal issues that arise in organized psychiatry because of financial conflicts of interest. She received the 2014 Distinguished Publication Award from the Association for Women in Psychology for her paper “Industry’s Colonization of Psychiatry.”

Mad in America’s mission is to serve as a catalyst for rethinking psychiatric care in the United States (and abroad). We believe that the current drug-based paradigm of care has failed our society, and that scientific research, as well as the lived experience of those who have been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder, calls for profound change.

Our non-profit organization promotes such change in two ways:

(1) We publish a webzine, madinamerica.com, that provides news of psychiatric research, original journalism articles, and a forum for an international group of writers—people with lived experience, peer specialists, family members, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, program managers, journalists, attorneys, and more—to explore issues related to this goal of “remaking psychiatry.”

(2) We run Mad In America Continuing Education, which hosts online courses taught by leading researchers in the field. These courses provide a scientific critique of the existing paradigm of care, and tell of alternative approaches that could serve as the foundation for a new paradigm, one that emphasizes psychosocial care, and de-emphasizes the use of psychiatric medications, particularly over the long-term. While the general public may take the courses, we are primarily marketing the courses to provider organizations and mental health professionals, including psychiatrists.

We believe that this mix of journalism, education and societal discussion can provide the seed for a much-needed remaking of mental health care in the United States. It is evident that our current “brain disease” model is flawed in so many ways, and we believe that it needs to be replaced by a model that emphasizes our common humanity, and promotes robust, long-term recovery and wellness.

We also believe it is important to provide readers with the opportunity to add their voices to this discussion.