Title: Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created Our Mental Health Crisis
Author: James Davies
Genre: Current Issues
Trigger Warnings: Mental illness, poverty, suicide (mentions), self-harm (mentions), forced institutionalization (mentions)
Back Cover:
In Britain alone, more than 20% of the adult population take a psychiatric drug in any one year. This is an increase of over 500% since 1980 and the numbers continue to grow. Yet, despite this prescription epidemic, levels of mental illness of all types have actually increased in number and severity.
Using a wealth of studies, interviews with experts, and detailed analysis, Dr James Davies argues that this is because we have fundamentally mischaracterised the problem. Rather than viewing most mental distress as an understandable reaction to wider societal problems, we have embraced a medical model which situates the problem solely within the sufferer and their brain.
Urgent and persuasive, Sedated systematically examines why this individualistic view of mental illness has been promoted by successive governments and big business – and why it is so misplaced and dangerous.
Review:
About three years ago I had a revelation: Most of the “mental illnesses” I had been diagnosed with were perfectly normal reactions to shitty situations. My depression was mainly caused by on-and-off homelessness, the stress of working three jobs while going to college full-time, finally having the space to reckon with a pretty awful childhood, and my only “friend” being my abusive boyfriend. My Borderline Personality Disorder completely disappeared once I found some stable, non-abusive relationships. My brain chemistry wasn’t broken – I just had some really awful circumstances.
This book takes that idea and expands on it, with sources and studies. It focuses on the UK, but the ideas are very generalizable even if the NHS stats aren’t. James gives a brief history of mental health treatment and how mental health drugs were developed and advertised, the expansion of the DSM, stats on drug-based interventions’ effectiveness (spoiler: they aren’t), and so much more.
The basic idea boils down to this:
Horrible circumstances that seem impossible to escape will naturally make people feel down, hopeless, and/or worried. Capitalism by design puts many people in horrible, nearly-inescapable circumstances. Changing the system is hard and the people benefiting from it would rather you didn’t, so it’s much easier to diagnose these feelings of being down, hopelessness, and worry as disorders of personal brain chemistry, and it’s profitable to prescribe drugs to treat these symptoms.
So many books in this vein shy away from saying capitalism is the problem here, so I’m so glad Sedated has the guts to go there. It doesn’t just say that and leave it be, though – it backs it up with sources and research and studies. I cannot express how validating this book was for me, who had this revelation from personal experience but still can’t get any of my doctors to take Borderline Personality Disorder off my record (despite not having any of the symptoms anymore) because the diagnostic manual says BPD is incurable.
I highly recommend this book. It isn’t perfect by any stretch, but it’s still full of fascinating studies and sources on mental health, psychiatry, and psychiatric drugs. I agree with the premise that capitalism is the real problem here, but if you don’t (and this book doesn’t convince you), you can also read it as a solid argument for environmental factors in mental health issues. This is a very needed book.
Bluejay Reads 