CEP is pleased to announce the publication of a new book called ‘The Sedated Society: The Causes and Harms of our Psychiatric Prescribing Epidemic’ (Palgrave Macmillan 2017). Edited by CEP co-founder Dr James Davies, the book contains chapter contributions from a team of global experts, including Joanna Moncrieff, Peter Kinderman, Peter Breggin, Sami Timimi, Peter Gøtzsche and Robert Whitaker.
Over 15% of the UK and 20% of the US adult population takes a psychiatric medication on any given day, and the numbers are only set to increase. When these figures are set against data exposing the poor outcomes and harms these medications often cause, it becomes apparent that their commercial success is not due to their therapeutic efficacy.
The book reveals how pharmaceutical sponsorship and marketing, diagnostic inflation, the manipulation and burying of negative clinical trials, lax medication regulation, and neoliberal public health policies have all been implicated in ever-rising psychopharmaceutical consumption. As increasing sedation of society may be leading to a more disabled society, this book closes by calling for total reform.
“’The Sedated Society’ is a provocative critique of the over-prescription psychiatric drugs, their minimal effectiveness, and the dangers they pose. The authors are eminent experts and their conclusions are important and troubling. It should be required reading for all medical students.”
—Prof Irving Kirsch, Associate Director at the Harvard Medical School
Copies can be ordered from Amazon UK here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/
Congratulations to the CEP members whose extraordinary moral courage made possible the publication of ‘The Sedated Society’. It’s a landmark book. For years I have been writing books and articles saying normal emotions and physiological states are being pathologised by a ‘stress management’ industry with 15 million websites spreading ‘stress awareness’. (Hairdressing is better regulated.) According to The New Statesman I am ‘widely regarded as a heartless bitch’ for questioning the stress ideology. But Hans Selye falsely extrapolated the concept from engineering in the 1930s and applied it to human psychology. It was bogus then and it is bogus now.
While I welcome the many books which are written about our prescription epidemic, I would like to see more people who have been victims of this epidemic and transformed their lives getting a stronger, authentic voice. I would like to see ‘professionals’encourage those who can speak for themselves to get a platform to add their voices. I am one of them and we can do it ourselves.
I believe that those who have experienced directly the terrible adverse effects of a sedated society have the passion only we can have to reach the average woman and man in the street. ” Nothing about us without us”
I have fought hard to get my health back – end of 2014/beginning of 2015 I became chronically ill after trying to ween off long term use of psychopharmaceutical drugs. It’s been a long journey to my recovery – I’m still working through PTSD systems. Though it is strong in my heart and my mind to become a vessel to pass on this message. I’m writing a book to try and reach more people. I have the passion you are talking about because I got my life back from this hell. I am healed and I just want to help heal others! I have gained many tools and an invaluable insight from my experiences. I really wish to demonstrate to others the importance of values such as compassion, community and connection, to distinguish the dreaded stigma and to become an ‘awakened society’. I pray we become a united force in our pursuit so we can educate before it’s too late. I’m happy to help with any future studies through this site and others, professors and other professionals as the steps we take today help pave the way for a brighter future. And finally it’s not just the people who are on these medications that are effected it’s the families and friends as well.