An incisive attack on the American Psychiatric Association that cuts to the quick. Walker (Help for the Hyperactive Child, 1978), a neurologist as well as a psychiatrist, contends that few psychiatrists perform the medical detective work necessary to evaluate their patients, but instead assign them a label from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), a catalog of disorders and symptoms published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). The DSM, which has undergone increasing scrutiny and controversy in recent years, is not the result of careful scientific research, Walker says, but a constantly changing political document reflecting its APA panel members' personal biases and beliefs. Most psychiatrists, he asserts, do not like the hands-on practice of medicine and are more comfortable assigning a DSM label to a patient's symptoms and then writing a prescription or recommending psychotherapy. They have, in his words, ``replaced the science of diagnosis with the pseudoscience of labeling.'' Psychiatrists who rely on DSM labeling overlook symptoms of actual brain dysfunction that may respond to proper medical treatment, Walker asserts, and he includes numerous examples of patients with brain tumors, Tourette's syndrome, lead poisoning, and other medical problems whose disorders were misdiagnosed and consequently mistreated before they came to him. Besides the harm they do to their patients, he contends, DSM-reliant psychiatrists fall behind the progress being made in other areas of medicine such as genetics, molecular biology, and immunology. Walker blames the APA, which sets the standards for psychiatric training, as well as insurers, psychiatric hospitals, and the pharmaceutical industry for fostering a situation in which psychiatrists are not truly acting as doctors, and patients are misdiagnosed and unnecessarily drugged. While urging his colleagues to rebel against the DSM, he offers advice to patients on how to demand proper care. A dose of strong medicine for the psychiatric profession.
Pub Date: May 17, 1996
ISBN: 0-471-14136-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1996
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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
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