| Description | Winner of the British Psychological Society Book Award 2004. Is madness purely a medical condition that can be treated with drugs? Is there really a clear dividing line between mental health and mental illness, or is it not so easy to classify who is sane and who is insane? In Madness Explained clinical psychologist Richard Bentall shatters the modern myths that surround psychosis. This work argues that we cannot define madness as an illness to be cured like any other, that labels such as 'schizophrenia' and 'manic depression' are meaningless, based on nineteenth-century classifications; and that experiences such as delusions and hearing voices are in fact exaggerations of the mental foibles to which we are all vulnerable. Also includes information on biological psychiatry, bipolar disorder, brain, cross cultural studies, culture, delusions, dementia praecox, depression, drug therapy, DSM-I, DSM-II, DSM-III, DSM-IIIR, DSM-IV, DSM-V, hallucinations, mania, manic depression, paronia, schizophrenia, self, self esteem, speech, symptoms, twin studies, etc. |
