I will say.. One concept that stood out to me was the difference between the disease-centered model and the drug-centered model. James Davies quotes Dr. Joanna Moncrieff as she explains the difference, “In the disease-centred model, people are assumed to have a mental disease, a problem in their brain. And drugs are thought to be effective because they rectify or reverse that underlying brain problem in some way… But the drug-centred model… rather emphasises that drugs are drugs; they are chemical substances that are foreign to the human body but which affect the way people think and feel. They have psychoactive properties, just like recreational drugs do, which alter the way the body functions at a physiological level.” (103) b) there needs to be more thorough regulation an transparency regarding psychiatry's financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry The first thing you’ll notice is that all the groups actually get better on the scale of improvement, even those who had received no treatment at all. This is because many incidences of depression spontaneously reduce by themselves after time without being actively treated. You’ll also see that both psychotherapy and drug groups get significantly better. But, oddly, so does the placebo group. More bizarre still, the difference in improvement between placebo and antidepressant groups is only about 0.4 points, which was a strikingly small amount. ‘This result genuinely surprised us’, said Kirsch leaning forward intently, ‘because the difference between placebos and antidepressants was far smaller than anything we had read about or anticipated..." I usually love books about how messed up the DSM, Big Pharma, and the social sciences are, but this book was terrible and here is why:

Having played just eight games for Scarlets since September, he's watched his side endure a turbulent campaign. The RSP president argues that the current methods enable them to get mental health funding. The DSM people that they expect users, somewhat Biblically, to make their own interpretations rather than taking the DSM literally. The latter seems a general issue in anything to do with personality and social policy – people using questionnaires and methods literally; not finding out who the person/s are before making decisions about them. You can add your own here. So the illnesses defined in the DSM are deeply suspect and the criteria used to define them are deeply suspect but worse, the DSM has led to a situation where the drug companies have medicalised the illnesses and produced drugs to treat these "illnesses". Patients have been diagnosed with chemical imbalances, despite that no test exists to support such a claim, and that there is no real conception of what a correct chemical balance would look like.’ (Dr David Kaiser, Psychiatric Times)

Enquire here

The theory is that the psychiatric illness is caused by some sort of imbalance in brain chemistry and the drugs will correct this imbalance. However, the imbalance has never been shown to exist. Even in the case of depression the evidence is pretty clear ...as the following citation indicates: James has come up with a series of small changes that people can make to their daily lives (Image: Supplied) I also didn't really find any plausible evidence for the author's statement that drugs have horrible side effects - his examples were all symptoms of the diseases the drugs are meant to treat, so how does he know they're caused by the drugs, but not by the illness that is basically left untreated if, as he suggests, the drugs aren't actually effective in curing the person?

He's been huge. I think my personality suits the way he likes to coach and manage players. It's been a good fit for me I guess. I find it worrying that a practising psychological therapist in the NHS knew so little about mental illness, diagnosis and treatment (!) as he claimed at the outset of writing this book. I learnt all about the problems with the diagnostic system (most prominently, the DSM) and how antidepressant medications work (or don't) during my undergraduate degree in psychology, and so what bothers me the most is that the picture he paints is one of a completely clueless psychological and psychiatric profession - which is plainly not true. And yes, it is correct that there are very few (if any) biomarkers for mental illness, but that does not mean they are not real illnesses. I would like to remind (or inform) James Davies that Alzheimer's disease does not yet have a biomarker, nor do any of the other dementias at present. Does he not think they are real illnesses either? This is why we keep doing research. Furthermore, his keenness throughout the book to keep referring to mental illness as 'perfectly normal human reactions' made me quite sad, because who is he to trivialise the suffering of people who are quite literally crippled by depression, social anxiety, schizophrenia? While I completely agree that the grief of losing a loved one and similar reactions should not be thought of as illness, and while I agree that medication should never be the first option (especially in children), I find his argument hopelessly one-sided. The points he is raising are extremely important and equally, we should be critical with regards to how psychiatry, psychology and medicine works. But reporting only one side of the story is not helping anyone, it just creates a basic mistrust in the psychological and psychiatric profession which is unwarranted. He is painting a picture of psychiatrists as pure, money-minded evil and completely fails to see the complex picture of treatment that psychiatry can form part of. Psychiatrists go to work every day wanting to help alleviate people's suffering. They chose that profession wanting to make a difference. His claim that "the only ones who have ever benefitted from psychiatric drugs are the drug companies" is not just biased, but very ill-informed. Psychiatry does not operate in a manner similar to any other field of medicine. Namely, diagnoses are granted based solely on symptomatic presentation, and not on objective biological testing. Davies writes: I don't really think about it too much. I'm just concerned with getting a few games under my belt and getting fit," he said.

Dr Alex George

From stress and anxiety, to everyday wear and tear and injury, life takes its toll on our bodies. Now, internationally renowned osteopath James Davies can help you heal your body. I can't believe that drug companies can have this type of relationship with health professionals--effectively paying them to use and aggressively promote their products to patients. Of course, the professionals are then going to prescribe these drugs, no one is immune to this kind of monetary temptation. Filled with sensationalist statements and hyperbole, Davies tries to expose the darker side of psychiatry and big pharma. Although he frequently references the literature, he only very briefly mentions their findings. The structure of the book is also somewhat confusing, as it is repetitive at times. The book is littered with several spelling and grammar errors. Reading this book was eye-opening and pretty scary. If taken literally I can imagine that no one would be able to trust any health professional at all. He uses sensationalism in places that I felt was unnecessary to get the point across. His main point is that the health profession is turning the stresses and strains of everyday life into treatable illnesses for monetary gain. His focus is on mental health which cannot be measured biologically in the same way that physical/visible illness can. He has a valid point with 48 million anti-depressant prescriptions in England in just one year! Who bites the hand that feeds? There is a huge cover-up, smoke and mirrors going on in the world of funding ‘research’ into psychiatric medicine whether in academic institutions, or with clinicians. And, gentle reader, there is even less transparency over this in the UK than there is in the States, where under the Obama administration, spearheaded by a particularly truth-and-justice campaigning Senator, Senator Grassley, some efforts to bring the Pharma hyena under the spotlight are beginning to bear fruit. But not here, where there is murk a plenty. Perhaps though, the fact that fully 56% of the panel member luminaries involved in writing the DSM-IV bible had 1 or more financial associations with the pharmaceutical industry, should begin to rip the wool from over our eyes. And, for those writing/creating the diagnostic categories, which would or course be primarily treated by pharmaceuticals, - 88% of DSM-IV panel members had drug company financial ties.from Big Pharma. And things don’t have appeared to have changed for the better in terms of ‘arms length’ involvement with the writing of the now current DSM-V.