Product Description
by David Healy (Author)
This provocative history of bipolar disorder illuminates how perceptions of illness, if not the illnesses themselves, are mutable over time.
Beginning with the origins of the concept of mania--and the term maniac--in ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, renowned psychiatrist David Healy examines how concepts of mental afflictions evolved as scientific breakthroughs established connections between brain function and mental illness. Healy recounts the changing definitions of mania through the centuries, explores the effects of new terminology and growing public awareness of the disease on culture and society, and examines the rise of psychotropic treatments and pharmacological marketing over the past four decades. Along the way, Healy clears much of the confusion surrounding bipolar disorder even as he raises crucial questions about how, why, and by whom the disease is diagnosed.
Drawing heavily on primary sources and supplemented with interviews and insight gained over Healy's long career, this lucid and engaging overview of mania sheds new light on one of humankind's most vexing ailments.
Front Jacket
In this provocative history, David Healy explores how perceptions of illness, if not illnesses themselves, are mutable over time.
Drawing heavily on primary sources and supplemented with interviews and insight gained over Healy's long career, this lucid and engaging narrative of bipolar disorder sheds new light on one of humankind's most vexing ailments.
David Healy is indeed an enfant terrible--and a very brave man. I doubt he is on Eli Lilly's or Pfizer's Christmas card list.--Times Literary Supplement
How did we come to apply such a serious diagnosis to vaguely depressed or irritable adults, to unruly children, and to nursing home residents? Is it simply that psychiatric science has progressed and now allows us to detect more easily an illness that had previously been ignored or misunderstood? Healy has another, more cynical explanation: the never-ending expansion of the category of bipolar disorder benefits large pharmaceutical companies eager to sell medications marketed with the disorder in mind.--London Review of Books
A powerful political tract. As social history it provides the most detailed available account of the interactions of psychiatry and the world of pharmaceutical manufacturing.--Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
If David Healy's intent is to present a cohesive, thorough, integrated, and provocative account of the history of the concept of mania and the evolution of what is currently called bipolar disorder, he is tremendously successful.--PsycCRITIQUES
--Gerald N. Grob, Ph.D., Henry E. Sigerist Professor of the History of Medicine Emeritus at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey "London Review of Books"Back Jacket
In this provocative history, David Healy explores how perceptions of illness, if not illnesses themselves, are mutable over time.
Drawing heavily on primary sources and supplemented with interviews and insight gained over Healy's long career, this lucid and engaging narrative of bipolar disorder sheds new light on one of humankind's most vexing ailments.
"David Healy is indeed an enfant terrible--and a very brave man. I doubt he is on Eli Lilly's or Pfizer's Christmas card list."--Times Literary Supplement
"How did we come to apply such a serious diagnosis to vaguely depressed or irritable adults, to unruly children, and to nursing home residents? Is it simply that psychiatric science has progressed and now allows us to detect more easily an illness that had previously been ignored or misunderstood? Healy has another, more cynical explanation: the never-ending expansion of the category of bipolar disorder benefits large pharmaceutical companies eager to sell medications marketed with the disorder in mind."--London Review of Books
"A powerful political tract. As social history it provides the most detailed available account of the interactions of psychiatry and the world of pharmaceutical manufacturing."--Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
"If David Healy's intent is to present a cohesive, thorough, integrated, and provocative account of the history of the concept of mania and the evolution of what is currently called bipolar disorder, he is tremendously successful."--PsycCRITIQUES
Author Biography
David Healy is a professor of psychiatry and the director of the North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine at Cardiff University. He is the author of several books on the history of psychopharmaceuticals, including Let Them Eat Prozac, The Antidepressant Era, and The Creation of Psychopharmacology.
