Saving Normal: An Insider's Revolt Against Out-Of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life

by Allen Frances

Anyone living a full, rich life experiences ups and downs, stresses, disappointments, sorrows, and setbacks. Today, however, millions of people who are really no more than "worried well" are being diagnosed as having a mental disorder and receiving unnecessary treatment.

In Saving Normal, Allen Frances, one of the world's most influential psychiatrists, explains why stigmatizing a healthy person as mentally ill leads to unnecessary, harmful medications, the narrowing of horizons, the misallocation of medical resources, and the draining of the budgets of families and the nation. We also shift responsibility for our mental well-being away from our own naturally resilient brains and into the hands of "Big Pharma," who are reaping multi-billion-dollar profits.

Frances cautions that the newest edition of the "bible of psychiatry," the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5 (DSM-5), is turning our current diagnostic inflation into hyperinflation by converting millions of "normal" people into "mental patients." Saving Normal is a call to all of us to reclaim the full measure of our humanity.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Psychiatry, Mental Health, Social Work, Science, Medicine

336 pages, Hardcover

First published April 3, 2013

About the author

Allen J. Frances (born 1942) is an American psychiatrist.
He is currently Professor and Chairman Emeritus of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University School of Medicine.
He is best known for serving as chair of the American Psychiatric Association task force overseeing the development and revision of the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV).
Frances is the founding editor of two well-known psychiatric journals: the Journal of Personality Disorders and the Journal of Psychiatric Practice.

Reviews

[Sara Nicolaci]

L’argomento trattato è di vitale importanza, peccato che abbia preso la parola questo autore. Non c’è coerenza e coesione fra le parti ma la cosa che più mi ha irritata è stato lo stile dell’autore che parla sparando sentenze senza un minimo di argomentazione e spesso senza L’adeguata formazione e consapevolezza (si pensi alle terribili proposte che violano i diritti alla privacy sui dati sanitari). Potrei continuare ma voglio lasciarmi questo libro alle spalle il prima possibile

[Serena Pozzi]

Il libro offre un'analisi veramente interessante del mondo delle malattie psicologiche, visto dalla parte di uno psichiatra che ammette gli errori della classe a cui appartiene e i suoi in primis.
È diviso in capitoli che organizzano le linee di pensiero dell'autore e aiutano il lettore a seguire il ragionamento con maggiore fluidità.

[Francesco Gironi]

Non condivido tutto tutto ma lui è un mito (troppo simpatico)