Anatomy of a Non-Epidemic - a Review by Dr. Torrey
HOW ROBERT WHITAKER GOT IT WRONG http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/ ... ew&id=2085
Review by E. Fuller Torrey, MD
Treatment Advocacy Center founder
In 2010 Robert Whitaker published Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America (New York: Crown Publishers). The book has circulated widely, in large measure due to Marcia Angell’s surprisingly uncritical review of it in the New York Review of Books (Angell, 2011). In its 396 pages Whitaker got many things right, including criticism of the broad DSM diagnostic criteria for mental illnesses; the reckless prescribing of psychiatric drugs for children; and the prostitution of many psychiatric leaders for the pharmaceutical industry. Indeed, regarding the last, Whitaker may have understated the problem, based on recently released court documents detailing how the pharmaceutical industry secretly controlled the Texas Medication Algorithm Project.
When it came to schizophrenia and antipsychotic drugs, however, Whitaker got it mostly wrong. He made so many errors it is difficult to know where to begin, so I will begin where he did. In his Preface Whitaker says that his research on the book began when he encountered “two research findings that just didn’t make sense”: a 1994 schizophrenia outcome study (Hegarty et al. 1994) and the World Health Organization (WHO) studies “which had twice found that schizophrenia outcomes were much better in poor countries.”
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