Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis

This book begins by looking at how modern medicine has been such a benefit in so many areas such as treating leukaemia - once a disease that caused almost fatality and death in most children is now something that can be treated and managed and few children now die from this form of cancer. In fact in all areas of medicine, there has been great gains and successes in treating the health and well-being of others has been remarkable. However, there is one definite exception, the treatment of mental health.- The book begins by looking at the DSM 5 which is the standard manual for diagnosing people with different conditions. The first edition began with 100 odd conditions and that has now increased to over 300. By understanding and supporting people with mental health disorders has still led to an increasing rise in suicide numbers and in fact people with mental health problems will often live 20 years less than that of their peers who don’t have such issues.- In countries where we have seen a doubling in psychiatric medicine used to treat mental illness we have also seen a doubling in many side-effects and health problems related to these medicines. Medicines are not necessarily the solution. Yet we are giving them out in greater numbers.- Labels have consequences and people who are given labels are then perceived by Society as well ourselves to be having medical and chemical chemical imbalances in the brain when many of these conditions will probably be part of the human condition. We can sometimes exasperate the problem.- From the 1970s or beyond the solution became looking at sticking plasters to stick on everything from the welfare system to mental health problems. It gave rise to antidepressants medication, although studies showed that people who were on antipsychotic medication for depression for long periods actually showed the worst outcome when compared to those who stopped earlier - as well as those on none at all. In fact people on long term medication often became worse. Yet we still keep giving these medicines out.- In the history of psychiatry, old treatments such as lobotomies are now considered barbaric but is the modern day model of psychiatry such as our increased use of anti-psychiatry medicine any better. In countries where mental health problems have risen with increases in anti-psychiatry medicines, there has also been an increase in related problems of mental health including bipolar, anxiety, depression and suicides. Therefore if we're just looking at medicialising people with mental health problems, are we really managing the problem by just putting a sticky plaster over everything.- In the UK 44 million people are taking anti-psychotic medicines and more people are starting antipsychotic medicines than stopping and this is leading to a wide range of concerns including frontal lobe shrinkage and greater increases in variety and depression. Robert Whittaker studies also showed that even in conditions like schizophrenia that people on medicines were more likely to have worse outcomes than those stopping early or on medicines and even with those who are not on any form of treatment.- Sometimes mental health services focus too much on what is wrong with someone as opposed to what happened to someone. So for example if you have an increased workload and you're not sleeping and therefore this is bringing you down and you feel a lot of stress and pressure it is often the remit of professionals to say that that person is suffering from depression rather than from an increased workload that could be managed and sorted rather than trying to manage the label of depression. Many well-being courses that are supplied by companies such as the NHS have no evidence to show that they work in regards to reducing stress and depression. If you have an increased workload for example, you find your job boring and you might have some personal problems it is totally natural to feel some signs of depression or sadness in your life but perhaps managing what it is it's bothering you might be more important than just going on the well-being course where are you practising mindfulness techniques. As already pointed out, no research shows that these kinds of courses actually support and help people and make any changes to their well-being and mental health status.- Many of the approaches that look at well-being include things like have a checklist of things like missing work, taking increasing leave, being unresponsive even though many of these signs are not in any signs of diagnostic tools for depression and the focus on changing the person rather than the environment that they might be living in which could have more benefit is ignored by managers. Many of these wellbeing tools and are just a distraction and often take away the blame from employees ensuring that they're doing something but it's not necessarily the right solution.- The book that then looks at a type of treatment called APT which will help people in times of stress but when you look at the statistical outcomes they show the same amount of recovery as people who haven't had any treatment even though they seem to fiddle the numbers to say that they are been a success. The greatest number of people who are struggling are actually people who are practitioners of APT therapy. They are constantly in burnout mode.- After talking about work, the book then goes on to discuss how the rise of these approaches are being used in educational establishments. The author begins with the rise of special educational needs. The number of people with special educational needs has doubled in 10 years since 2010. Now that number now accounts for almost 20% of all schoolchildren in education. This could be their speech, language, cognition, learning, or behavioural issues. However, the biggest increase in this number is those with a mental health problem be at anxiety, depression, ADHD and behavioural problems.- Mental health concerns have risen since 2004 by 48% with an estimated one in eight children suffering from some form of mental health condition or difficulty.- Since the 1980s medications for mental health have increased by 400% with large numbers of people now on medication. But when you look at how a drug is approved there are an awful lot of flaws in the process of allowing a drug to be marketed and passed for use. For example there may be one positive clinical trial that can be accepted and submitted whilst admitting three negative trials that showed a drug not working can be excluded. It's also worth noting that on certain drug trials it might not necessarily be the best treatment but a form of treatment can be used on someone who might have a response or reaction to a far superior form of medicine. However, when these medicines are prescribed it is not for that reason but more probably to do with the fact that it has been marketed well even though the evidence is not robust and that it is also cheaper than a superior medicine which would be more effective in regards to treatment of mental health problems and conditions.- We also live in an age where everything is about the economy and building money for shareholders and this in turns means that we treat happiness through buying consumer goods rather than actually looking to see what is in the best interest of people and society. One of the things that the author discusses is what are the things we should be considering and what kind of society do we want. I know I would like a kinder, warmer society with more empathy and curiosity and braveness rather than one that is drawn to human needs and greed. We can't just buy our way out of everything and maybe for happiness and contentment, we have to work on it through understanding and developing better morals as well as kindness and attitude.- The book looks at how people who have aspirations and dreams and what they might buy can influence their personality, for example an interesting experiment was carried out in people who drove high status, expensive cars and low status cars and the people who drove shiny, expensive, high costing cars were more likely to not stop for a pedestrian that was trying to cross the road and show less consideration for others. In my own personal experience I feel that this is often true and that people in low status cars are less likely to cut up in front of people or stop when you are trying to cross a road as opposed to people who might have a nice shiny Mercedes-Benz, BMW or Audi.- People with much more wealth and a higher status tend to be much less kinder in their attitude to others than people who have a low status position. The idea behind this is that people who are selfish or better paid tend to be more selfish in their approaches and behaviours to others. These ideas gave rise to a theory of materialism in that people who were more wealthy or a higher status tended to cheat more and find ways obtain things that people of low status weren't so bothered about. But people of high status and more wealth, also gave rise to a certain level of unhappiness. One example of this is that people with low status could be given the idea that they were a high status person and they then showed changes in their behaviour to seek more in the way of material goods and wealth. The main argument is that people who are wealthy tend to be more selfish but maybe that's part of why they have become wealthy. Many of these people who are obsessed by materialistic wealth goods often get something but as soon as the item has been bought they lose interest and seek something else. I generally believe that the love of money and the desire to have more and more of it is actually another kind of addiction in a similar way that someone might be addicted to heroin or gambling.- Many children who become materialistic often have parents of a similar nature who don't care for them beyond what the child has achieved rather than offering love and acceptance from something else.- Materialistic people often feel alienated and have social difficulties in forming relationships so they look for a crutch to help them feel more accepted in themselves but actually part of that results in a more selfish attitude. However the message in this book is that people who are materialistic are actually in many ways a part of their problem and they then seek something else. But the character flaw is there in the first place: they seek something to give them more status because they feel they lack something. This is something that I've often thought and found this really illuminating.- The author looks also at how in modern day Britain, where schools are are ranked by league tables and even parents are putting high levels of pressure on their own children to succeed and pass exams, is it any wonder that children are feeling high levels of anxiety and sadness. In countries such as Canada, where things are much more relaxed, there are far fewer children with so-called mental health problems. It doesn't help that many of these needs are created not just by governments alone, but also by many parents.- However, another point in this book is that suffering can actually cause many good things to occur. Think of the civil rights movement which was built on the suffering people were experiencing. Also, many people's suffering such as a death of a partner or child that has an illness can help us to truly start to reevaluate what is truly important in our life.- A new form of a GP’s quick diagnostic checklist tool was also introduced to GP’s practices. These checklists allowed busy GP’s to check how somebody might be feeling low and lacking sleep could be used to determine if somebody had anxiety or depression but they set a really low bar. In 2002 treatment prescriptions for antipsychotics were at 25 million and now in 2021 they are at 75 million prescriptions a year. Note, these checklists were provided by pharmaceutical companies.- The author discussed how capitalistic markets such as that that came about through Margaret Thatcher looked more at how people try to do the best that they can by themselves rather than being supported by the state. However, one of the questions we can often ask ourselves and a helpful thought experiment is why do so many people of socially deprived backgrounds make up the bulk of those who are on medication for mental health problems, is it something within themselves or is it something to do with the circumstances. Hard for a wealthy man (as already discussed) to have a clue what it is like to be raised in poverty.- Many people believe that they wish to be more entitled and seek a more materialistic world of possession and privileges to help those with mental health problems to meet this need. But in countries where wealth is better distributed, people feel more secure and equal, less of these problems exist.- For most of our history we have needed to act in a cooperative manner to be a part of a society that evolved over a long period of time to an egalitarian way of thinking. But now things have changed. There is a significant link of this book has already pointed out that sometimes inequality is driving increased levels of mental health.- Reading this book has been an eye-opening experience. The book is beautifully written and I think all the points in this book are really worth thinking about. I'm going to give it to a lot of people. If you know someone on antipsychotics or who has been diagnosed with a mental health problem, or works or is a child in the educational system or an anything to do with life, this book is really worth reading and very important. This is one of those books that can change the way you look at things.

Sedated is a breathtaking exposé of state sanctioned gaslighting and victim blaming. Having lived through Thatcherism, I thought I was fully aware of its devastating and divisive impact, but this astonishing account made me think again.I have always had concerns about what I consider to be the overmedicalisation of life, but beyond unnecessary consumption of medications and over-reliance on often poorly evidenced interventions, I hadn’t really thought about broader impacts.Sedated reveals how the (now) widely contested ‘chemical imbalance’ theory attributed to some mental health diagnoses, and the subsequent reliance on pharmaceutical management, while making huge profits for the industry, also allows other organisations and institutions - including governments - to abdicate all responsibility for the stress, frustration, fatigue and depression that many of us feel at some point in our lives. Anxiety is normal in an unjust society, and it is often something that employers or governments could go at least some way to alleviating by addressing issues such as poverty, unemployment, health and gender inequalities, to name but a few. However if the ‘blame’ can be placed on us and our ‘abnormal’ chemistry, it is then up to us to take action, the ‘successful’ outcome of that action being to get us (back) to work without anything being done within that workplace to rectify the issues that contributed to our distress in the first place.Sedated is both sickening and infuriating, but it is also enlightening and well worth the read.

This book presents a great deal of information relating to the problems around how mental illness is conceptualized. It tries to relate it to a wider political view of capitalism and sometimes seemed to me to be rather on the left of such views. However, it mostly tries to balance it's views and presents a great deal of unbiased factual information which quite simply is very disturbing! It is worth reading simply to access these facts and I would suggest also for anyone who is concerned with the way so-called mental health provision is dealt with in this country.

James Davies, former psychotherapist and Reader in Medical Anthropology at the University of Roehampton, shows how the “mental health” industry has been shaped to meet the needs of our current economic system, that chimera of socialism and capitalism he refers to as “neoliberalism” or “late capitalism.” The mental health industry has depoliticized suffering by conceptualizing human distress as brain disease, rather than a perfectly understandable reaction to the distressing circumstances an individual finds himself in; it has pathologized suffering by attributing it (in the absence of any credible evidence) to faulty brains or faulty genes, thereby exempting the rest of us from having to do anything about the real causes of human distress; and it has commodified suffering by turning it into a problem that can be solved by consuming more, or by taking the right pills.This process began around the time when the DSM-III ushered in the new era of biological psychiatry – the same period “deregulation” became a fashionable buzzword in Washington and London. But the “deregulation” envisioned by free-market conservatives such as Milton Friedman in fact never took place. What happened instead was that the regulatory agencies like the FDA remained intact, but were completely co-opted by the drug companies, thereby giving us a system which combines the worst of all possible worlds, which socializes the costs but privatizes the gains. More or less the same thing has happened to most of our major institutions, including but not limited to higher education, finance, and our Prison-Industrial Complex.Predictably, wealth inequality has soared, along with a long list of accompanying social ills, and this in turn has led to an explosion of psychiatric diagnosis and drugging, further enlarging the power and profits of the pharmaceutical companies, leading to even greater inequalities in wealth, and so a positive feedback loop has been established. The drug companies and their ever-more tumescent profits are both a symptom and a cause of our societal distress.In addition to the drugs, our rulers have offered us various Band-Aids such as the Increased Access to Psychotherapy program, which was initiated to help workers deal with stress-related burnout and mental illness. But the program’s ruthless focus on numerical goals and targets precluded the therapists from offering any kind of meaningful help to the clients, and the therapists themselves reported shockingly high rates of stress-related burnout and mental illness. What’s more, the outcomes for the clients were no better than what would have been achieved by doing nothing at all. This would be comical if it weren’t so sad.In place of the current paradigm, Dr. Davies invokes psychiatrist Eric Fromm’s concept of the “being mode of living,” which he contrasted to the “having mode of living.” This sounds like a worthy goal, and hopefully this book will spark conversations about how to get from here to there.

Mental health professionals should know what is distress, what is medicalisation, and why do we medicalise distress. Only when they know these differences, they can help the mental health to progress. This book is a must read for all mental health professionals

Libro importante con mucho food for thought. Buena información y desarrollo sobre un tema crucial para el futuro inmediato del ser humano. El crecimiento acelerado en la medicación para depresiones y ansiedad no solo no están reduciendo éstas, sino que las empeoran. La práctica actual no es curar adecuadamente, sino medicar para que estén en condiciones de volver a trabajar y consumir. Buen análisis de qué cambios en las prioridades sociales de los últimos 40 años producen estos problemas. A pesar de las críticas que hago a continuación, es un libro que se debe leer.Demasiado posicionamiento político anti liberal del autor, que por momentos resulta molesto en la lectura y hace dudar de su objetividad respecto del tema bajo análisis. Critica abiertamente los programas sociales de los gobiernos conservadores, como causantes de la situación. Es un punto de vista legítimo y seguramente cierto en mucha medida, pero el tema de cómo se está generalizando la mala práctica es importante y hubiese sido preferible que se tratase con menos ideología.

James.... you are just great! Thank you for taking us on this journey and to be able to see the wider perspective why the medicalisation of suffering is just a commodification of our distress, to create more wealth for some.... and no change for others.The anthropological style of writing shares also some valuable visual impressions of the process of investigation..... I love it!

Big Pharma are evil