The Emperor's New Drugs
  • Published: 15 September 2009
  • ISBN: 9781847920836
  • Imprint: Bodley Head
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $44.99
Categories:

The Emperor's New Drugs

Exploding the Antidepressant Myth

Formats & editions
EBook
1 Sep 2010
Tr. Paperback
15 Sep 2009
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A journey of discovery and an exposé of the pharmaceutical industry.

Everyone knows that antidepressant drugs are miracles of modern medicine. Professor Irving Kirsch knew this as well as anyone. But, as he discovered during his research, there is a problem with what everyone knows about antidepressant drugs. It isn't true.

How did antidepressant drugs gain their reputation as a magic bullet for depression? And why has it taken so long for the story to become public? Answering these questions takes us to the point where the lines between clinical research and marketing disappear altogether.

Using the Freedom of Information Act, Kirsch accessed clinical trials that were withheld, by drug companies, from the public and from the doctors who prescribe antidepressants. What he found, and what he documents here, promises to bring revolutionary change to the way our society perceives, and consumes, antidepressants.

The Emperor's New Drugs exposes what we have failed to see before: depression is not caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain; antidepressants are significantly more dangerous than other forms of treatment and are only marginally more effective than placebos; and, there are other ways to combat depression, treatments that don't only include the empty promise of the antidepressant prescription.

This is not a book about alternative medicine and its outlandish claims. This is a book about fantasy and wishful thinking in the heart of clinical medicine, about the seductions of myth, and the final stubbornness of facts.
  • Published: 15 September 2009
  • ISBN: 9781847920836
  • Imprint: Bodley Head
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $44.99
Categories:

About the author

Irving Kirsch

Irving Kirsch is a lecturer in medicine at the Harvard Medical School and a professor of psychology at Plymouth University, as well as professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Hull, and the University of Connecticut. He has published eight books and numerous scientific articles on placebo effects, antidepressant medication, hypnosis, and suggestion. His work has appeared in Science, Science News, New Scientist, New York Times, Newsweek, and BBC Focus and many other leading magazines, newspapers, and television documentaries. He is the author of The Emperor's New Drugs.

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Also by Irving Kirsch

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Praise for The Emperor's New Drugs

Irving Kirsch brilliantly documents a grim scandal of regulatory and clinical failures concerning antidepressants but also holds out hope in one of the most profound meditations for 50 years on the nature and role of the placebo effect in clinical care

David Healy, author of Let Them Eat Prozac: The Unhealthy Relationship Between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Depression

A terrific account of how optimism, greed and scientific incompetence have misled us about the nature of depression and the drugs we throw at it

Druin Burch, author of Taking the Medicine

Wide scope, smooth delivery, and mastery of the data

www.popularscience.co.uk

A fascinating and disturbing book

Literary Review

Kirsch's account of the background and assumptions of the "chemical imbalance" theory of depression is helpfully clear, and his damning critique convincing. Similarly, his explanation of placebos and how they work allows the reader to get to grips with some fascinating possibilities.

David Smail, Times Higher Education Supplement

Since it's publication The Emperor's New Drugs has helped to usher in sweeping changes in the way prescriptions are handled by those that practice ethically

Kaye Bewley, Human Givens Journal

A beautifully written, profoundly important book that is sure to shake up the psychiatric establishment and pharmaceutical industry. Many readers will be excited, and probably disturbed, by this brilliant and shocking expose of the lack of efficacy and dangers of the most popular antidepressant medications. The author also reveals the astonishing lack of evidence for the widely believed but poorly validated theory that depression and anxiety result from a chemical imbalance in the brain. This book is long overdue and I hope that people will pay attention. Kudos to Dr. Kirsch!

David D. Burns M.D., author of Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy
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