Healthy Skepticism Library item: 8523

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: chapter

Jureidini JN, Mansfield PR.
The scope of the problem of the relationship between drug companies and doctors
Maitra B, Timimi S. Critical Voices in Child and Adolescent Mental Health London: Free Association Books 2006
http://www.fabooks.com/book.php?id=434

Abstract:

There is a crisis of credibility within child and adolescent psychiatry. Child and adolescent mental health theory and practice have come to be dominated by a narrow biomedical frame with rising numbers of children being diagnosed with psychiatric illnesses and given psychotropic medication to ‘treat’ these purported diseases. Children’s lives are thus stripped of context, complexity and depth, resulting in them being exposed to the therapeutic violence that can result from excessive medicalisation. This unique text brings together, for the first time, senior professionals and academics from the field of child and adolescent psychiatry, who share a deep concern about the direction that mainstream theory and practice has been heading over the past decade. These ‘critical voices’ draw on research and writing from related disciplines and offer radical questioning of the discipline’s most cherished assumptions in order to find new ways of thinking about theory and of helping users of our services. By privileging debate over consensus, this book brings marginal voices into the mainstream. Through covering topics as diverse as culture, the influence of drug companies, the impact of trauma, the crisis in academic medicine, systemic perspectives, adolescent in-patient units, ADHD, childhood depression and the role of diet and nutrition, this book will bring hope to those looking for alternatives to diagnosis and medication for helping children and families with their emotional and behavioural problems.