This edited volume provides an answer to a rising public health concern: what drives the over
prescription of psychiatric medication epidemic? Over 15% of the UK public takes a psychiatric
medication on any given day and the numbers are only set to increase. Placing this figure
alongside the emerging clinical and scientific data revealing their poor outcomes and the harms
these medications often cause their commercial success cannot be explained by their
therapeutic efficacy.Chapters from an interdisciplinary team of global experts in critical
psychopharmacology rigorously examine how pharmaceutical sponsorship and marketing diagnostic
inflation the manipulation and burying of negative clinical trials lax medication regulation
and neoliberal public health policies have all been implicated in ever-rising
psycho-pharmaceutical consumption. This volume will ignite a long-overdue public debate. It
will be of interest to professionals in the field of mental health and researchers ranging from
sociology of health to medical anthropology and the political economy of health.
