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Product Description
While millions of patients with severe mental illnesses are neglected, those charged with caring for them are engaged in a troubling debate: Who should treat these patients-and how? On one side are psychoanalysts, on the other are pill-pushing psychiatrists. And on the fringe are neuroscientists, who are learning volumes about the brain but whose discoveries have largely been ignored. Truly, psychiatry is in crisis.In this important book, Harvard psychiatrist J. Allan Hobson and medical journalist Jonathan A. Leonard explore the roots of this predicament and propose, for the first time, the development of a more balanced approach to treatment-neurodynamics-that bridges the worlds of biomedicine, therapy, and neuroscience. Written with passion and informed by decades of experience, Out of Its Mind shows a clear path to reviving psychiatry, providing sound care for millions, and realizing humanity's ancient dream of treating not just the mind or brain alone, but both together.
Amazon.com Review
Prozac and all its cousins haven't helped psychiatry as much as their manufacturers claim. In Out of Its Mind, Harvard psychiatrist J. Allan Hobson and science writer Jonathan Leonard argue that the field is reaching a crisis in the struggle between biological treatments and psychoanalytic methods and that a synthesis is badly needed. Calling his approach "neurodynamic," Hobson advocates a broad understanding of each patient's unique situation, including genetic and physiological factors, as well as social qualities like family history. Hardly revolutionary, but given the resistance of HMO culture to any treatment that's not simple and cheap, the paradigm will require aggressive, concerted efforts to implement.
The book is half history of psychiatry, half utopian plan of action. The authors first examine the strengths and weaknesses of both treatment modes and, unsurprisingly, find problems with uncritical acceptance of one over the other. The current mess, including a 90 percent reduction in hospital beds and a wild emphasis on pill-pushing, is a direct result of the successful pharmaceutical treatments devised in recent decades. Hobson and Leonard ask for broader education for psychiatrists and other professionals, to include what might be called holistic methods--wrapping up nature and nurture to better treat ill people. Out of Its Mind will appeal to both nontechnical readers and those directly involved in mental health and guide them toward the emerging synthesis. --Rob Lightner
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