by Joseph Glenmullen ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 2000
A controversial message, alarming for SSRI-takers and anathema to SSRI-makers, but bound to please his fellow talk...
A psychiatrist cites research and his own clinical experience to sound a compelling warning about the hazards of selective
serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants. Glenmullen (The Pornographer's Grief and Other Tales of Human Sexuality,1993), a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School, uses the term “Prozac backlash” to describe the brain's reaction to changes in serotonin levels brought about by SSRIs such as Prozac. These reactions are, he believes, responsible for serious neurological side effects such as tics, agitation, muscle spasms, and parkinsonism. Other drawbacks of SSRIs cited by Glenmullen are disturbing withdrawal symptoms, drug dependence, sexual dysfunction, and an association with violence and suicide. While acknowledging they have short-term value for symptomatic relief, Glenmullen asserts that some 75 percent of patients are on SSRIs needlessly. He argues vehemently against their casual, long-term use and demands better monitoring of patients. He explores (and deplores) the influence of cost-conscious HMOs, psychopharmacology's application of a biological model to psychological syndromes, and the power of the pharmaceutical industry on the increase in the use of SSRIs. Using patients' stories from his own practice, he illustrates both the dangers of long-term SSRIs use and the benefits of alternative approaches. Numerous case studies demonstrate his success in treating patients suffering from anxiety, depression, addictions, and eating disorders using psychotherapy of various kinds—cognitive, behavioral, twelve-step, group, individual, family, or couple—sometimes in combination with herbal remedies such as St. John's wort, kava, or valerian, and when necessary with Valium-type drugs. Glenmullen concludes by calling for more research on the neurotoxicity of SSRIs, better warnings to doctors and patients about their potential side effects, curbs on excessive promotion of these drugs, and closer scrutiny of their use with children.
A controversial message, alarming for SSRI-takers and anathema to SSRI-makers, but bound to please his fellow talk therapists.Pub Date: April 5, 2000
ISBN: 0-684-86001-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2000
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by Bonnie Tsui ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2020
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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by Bonnie Tsui ; illustrated by Sophie Diao
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by Bonnie Tsui
by Rebecca Skloot ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 9, 2010
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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edited by Rebecca Skloot and Floyd Skloot
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