IRB Media Summary of Susannah Cahalan's The Great Pretender

Annotation

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview: #1 Psychiatry, as a field, has made great strides in recent years. However, it still lags behind other medical fields in terms of innovation. While it recognizes that serious mental illnesses are legitimate brain disorders, it does not have any objective measures to diagnose them.#2 The question of how to define mental illness is one that has risen above semantics. It shapes everything from how we medicate, treat, and insure patients to how we police and whom we choose to imprison.#3 I had never known anything about madness other than what I had learned in school or through my family. I had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and the doctors had seen a schizoaffective patient. They were wrong. But in nearly any other case, they would have been right.#4 Psychiatry is a field that makes judgments about people, their personalities, beliefs, and morality. It is a mirror that is held up to the society in which it is practiced.