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Previous Volume 346:2096 June 27, 2002 Number 26 Next

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By Robert Whitaker. 334 pp. New York, Perseus, 2002. $27. ISBN 0-7382-0385-8.

This book is more of an indictment than a historical account, in keeping with its subtitle. The author, a medical journalist, virtually equates mental illness with schizophrenia; depression and other psychiatric disorders are mentioned only parenthetically. The story starts on a positive note, with the establishment of proper medical wards for the insane in Pennsylvania Hospital, around 1800. This occurred in the wake of the work of Pinel, who in 1793 was the first to free psychiatric patients from their chains, in Paris. The medical approach, sometimes still harsh, was followed by the heyday of "moral treatment," between the 1840s . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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