Warning: Psychiatry Can Be Hazardous to Your Mental Health [PDF]

From William Glasser, bestselling author of Choice Theory and Reality Therapy, comes this provocative, fresh look at how psychopharmacology has usurped the role of psychotherapy in our society, to the great detriment of the patients involved.

In the last twenty years, psychiatry has changed completely. The vast majority of psychiatrists who used to counsel now gather together lists of symptoms such as depression, anxiety, and compulsions, wrongly call them mental illnesses, and claim they should be treated by brain drugs -- Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, and Ritalin among them. Compassion, counseling, and mental health have been reduced to tiny blips on the current psychiatric screen.

Dr. Glasser brings mental health back into the picture. He explains what it is and how each of us can use the new ideas in this book to work toward improving our own mental health or helping children and other family members to improve theirs.

The hazards Dr. Glasser warns about are:

1. being diagnosed as mentally ill when you are not;
2. treatment for that nonexistent illness, often with harmful brain drugs; and, worst of all,
2. being told that there is nothing you can do for yourself. In this book you will learn that you can in fact do a lot for yourself.

Unfortunately, you have every reason to believe your psychiatrist's diagnosis, because our whole society has been blitzed by a multimillion-dollar media and advertising campaign financed by drug manufacturers. Their propaganda, aimed at convincing vulnerable people that they are mentally ill and should ask for a prescription, has been wildly successful.

This book presents scientific proof that there is nothing wrong with your brain and there is no pill for the happiness you need. It strongly supports counseling but goes further, because the majority of people with symptoms can't afford or wont accept counseling. It teaches how you can, by yourself or with your family's help, improve your own mental health at no cost and at no risk to yourself. If you or a family member has been diagnosed as mentally ill, this is the book you should read.

William Glasser, M.D., is a world-renowned psychiatrist who lectures widely. An author of many books, including Choice Theory, Reality Therapy, The Quality School, and Getting Together and Staying Together, he is the president of the William Glasser Institute in Los Angeles.