Barber articulately and persuasively counsels that it’s time to abandon the quick-fix, pop-a-pill approach.
A sharply critical look at the way antidepressants are marketed and prescribed in the United States.
While the mentally ill aren’t receiving the treatment they need, Americans with ordinary life problems are being overmedicated, writes Barber (Psychiatry/Yale School of Medicine; Songs from the Black Chair: A Memoir of Mental Interiors, 2005). Though not a psychiatrist, he has a decade of professional experience working with mentally ill homeless people. He severely criticizes the pharmaceutical industry but places much of the blame on the medical profession, charging that at a time when the understanding of psychiatric drugs remains crude, doctors are too willing to prescribe the pills that patients request after seeing them advertised on television. The author divides the book into two parts. The first provides a capsule history of psychiatry in the United States and examines the shortcomings of the currently ascendant biological, or neuropsychiatric, approach. Barber attacks with shocking statistics (in 2006, 227 million antidepressant prescriptions were dispensed to Americans, up by 30 million from the 2002 levels) and punchy prose: “Psychiatry [is] jettisoning the impoverished mentally ill for the cash-carrying worried well.” He reserves particular mockery for the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual, citing its recent introduction of Motivational Deficiency Disorder as a nonsensical medicalization of laziness. Part Two advocates the use of an alternative, cognitive-behavioral therapy. The author spells out details of two related treatment approaches: the Stages of Change model, which recognizes that change is a dynamic process in which relapse is a realistic part of a continuum; and Motivational Interviewing, in which the therapist uses a technique of empathetic listening that centers on the client’s ambivalence about change.
Barber articulately and persuasively counsels that it’s time to abandon the quick-fix, pop-a-pill approach.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-375-42399-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2007
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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