All We Have to Fear

ISBN-13: 9780199793754 / Angielski / Twarda / 2012 / 320 str.

Allan V. Horwitz Phd; Dsw Jerome C. Wakefield

Opis

Thirty years ago, it was estimated that less than five percent of the population had an anxiety disorder. Today, some estimates are over fifty percent, a tenfold increase. Is this dramatic rise evidence of a real medical epidemic?

In All We Have to Fear, Allan Horwitz and Jerome Wakefield argue that psychiatry itself has largely generated this "epidemic" by inflating many natural fears into psychiatric disorders, leading to the over-diagnosis of anxiety disorders and the over-prescription of anxiety-reducing drugs. American psychiatry currently identifies disordered anxiety as irrational anxiety disproportionate to a real threat. Horwitz and Wakefield argue, to the contrary, that it can be a perfectly normal part of our nature to fear things that are not at all dangerous--from heights to negative judgments by others to scenes that remind us of past threats (as in some forms of PTSD). Indeed, this book argues strongly against the tendency to call any distressing condition a "mental disorder." To counter this trend, the authors provide an innovative and nuanced way to distinguish between anxiety conditions that are psychiatric disorders and likely require medical treatment and those that are not--the latter including anxieties that seem irrational but are the natural products of evolution. The authors show that many commonly diagnosed "irrational" fears--such as a fear of snakes, strangers, or social evaluation--have evolved over time in response to situations that posed serious risks to humans in the past, but are no longer dangerous today.

Drawing on a wide range of disciplines including psychiatry, evolutionary psychology, sociology, anthropology, and history, the book illuminates the nature of anxiety in America, making a major contribution to our understanding of mental health.

Recenzje

An interesting an thought-provoking perspective. It is recommended to anyone who is interested in the foundational issues of psychiatric diagnosis.

O autorze

Allan V. Horwitz is Board of Governors Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University. He is the author of numerous articles and books on various aspects of the sociology of mental illness including The Social Control of Mental Illness, Creating Mental Illness,, and, with Jerome C. Wakefield, The Loss of Sadness (Oxford University Press). He is the recipient of the Pearlin Award for lifetime Achievement in the Sociology of Mental Health from the American Sociological Association. Jerome C. Wakefield is University Professor and Professor of Social Work at New York University. His previous faculty appointments were at the University of Chicago, Columbia University, and Rutgers University. Holding doctorates in both Social Work and Philosophy, he has published many articles on the conceptual foundations of psychiatry, especially on the concept of mental disorder and related topics at the intersection of philosophy and the mental health professions.