Research Catalog

Title

The antidepressant era / David Healy.

Author

Healy, David, 1954-

Publication

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1997.

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Holdings

Details

Description

x, 317 pages : illustrations; 25 cm

Summary

• Most arresting is Healy's insight into the marketing of antidepressants and the medicalization of the neuroses. Demonstrating that pharmaceutical companies are as much in the business of selling psychiatric diagnoses as of selling psychotropic drugs, he raises disturbing questions about how much of medical science is governed by financial interest.
• The Antidepressant Era chronicles the history of psychopharmacology from its inception with the discovery of chlorpromazine in 1951 to current battles over whether these powerful chemical compounds should replace psychotherapy. An expert in both the history and the science of neurochemistry and psychopharmacology, David Healy offers a close-up perspective on early research and clinical trials, the stumbling and successes that have made Prozac and Zoloft household names.

Subject

• Antidepressants > History
• Antidepressive Agents > history

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [269]-305) and index.

Contents

1. Of Illness, Disease, and Remedies -- 2. The Discovery of Antidepressants -- 3. Other Things Being Equal -- 4. The Trials of Therapeutic Empiricism -- 5. A Pleasing Look of Truth -- 6. The Luke Effect -- 7. From Oedipus to Osheroff -- App. Current Major Physical Treatments for Depression.

ISBN

0674039572 (alk. paper)

LCCN

97023118

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries