Strictly Bipolar: New book

[Jill Anderson]

If the post-war period was called the 'Age of Anxiety' and the 1980s and '90s the 'Antidepressant Era', we now live in Bipolar times. Mood-stabilising medication is routinely prescribed to adults and children alike, with child prescriptions this decade increasing by 400% and overall diagnoses by 4000%. What could explain this explosion of bipolarity? Is it a legitimate diagnosis or the result of Big Pharma marketing? Exploring these questions, Darian Leader challenges the rise of 'bipolar' as a catch-all solution to complex problems, and argues that we need to rethink the highs and lows of mania and depression.

'A beautifully thoughtful understanding not just of highs and lows,mania and depression, but of why and how these mechanisms work in our mindsand bodies and how the human subject is coerced todayto embrace a culture of 'bipolarity'' Susie Orbach

'A timely book. Darian Leader's thoughts are more fixated strong-arm interesting, more humane and more persuasive than the profit coercion of the madness industry. Instead of the shoddy reasoning that leads to wrong treatment and over-treatment, he offers illumination and insight; his book is a contribution to a debate, but it could also change lives' Hilary Mantel

Find out more.

[Janie Greville]

And of course, by diagnosing and treating people, who often are traumatised subjects, and very troubled people in need of understanding and sensitive treatment, the actual problems go back underground so that mood stabilisers produce a half life for those on them, unable to address the real issues that triggered the dysfunctional pattern of emotional overwhelm and ego instability.

[julie gosling]

yes Janie - I totally agree - its just plastering over the cracks with a toxic band-aid that sucks the spirit out, dries energy up and deepens the cracks underneath

[Bob Sapey]

Sounds an interesting read, I shall order it.
I'm also reminded of something Bob Whitaker said, that he sees the cause of the overuse of drugs as lying with psychiatry rather than the pharmaceutical companies. Sure the Big Pharma profit and support their profits, but it is psychiatrists who choose to treat those cracks as a disease and to prescribe the plaster. They could know better.

[julie gosling]

Totally agree Bob - and of course the large financial interests/incentives that physicians (US particularly) hold in the prescribed drugs economy might even promote the clinical profession to label such cracks and fissures as ever emergent landscapes for colonisation, pathologising and 'pharmacisation' - whoops! - I've just invented a new word (I think??)