Within our lifetimes we have made amazing advances in the treatment of the mentally ill. In the United States more than 800,000 patients have been freed from the warehouses of state mental hospitals, many dramatically awakened from the nightmare of psychotic illness. The successful treatment for the vast majority of those with serious mental illness has become the new norm. With the appropriate use of new psychiatric drugs plus improved psychotherapeutic techniques, we have seen nearly magical improvement, even in those thought to be untreatable. Apart from those whose hallucinations, delusions, and confusion have disappearred, others are able, sometimes for the first time ever, to climb out of the black hole of major depression and to experience fun and pleasure. Those with chaotic lives caused by adult attention deficit disorder can come to focus, organize and become productive. Many rendered helpless by the demands of obsessive compulsive symptoms can rejoice as their symptoms decrease and no longer control their lives. Drug dependence and addiction can be better and better controlled. Those with brain damage, including Alzheimers disease can improve their level of brain functioning and lead better lives. All this within the last 50 years! And the best is yet to come. FROM MADHOUSE TO MENTAL HEALTH is a compelling chronicle of how we have advanced from abysmal attempts to deal with the mentally ill to the prospect of hope, relief, and even cure. I hope you will join me through that journey. Harvey Widroe MD
About the Author: Dr Harvey Widroe is an internationally known psychiatrist who over decades has treated thousands of patients, many with serious mental illness. Apart from his work treating patients he has developed and helped operate a number of psychiatric hospitals. He has lectured extensively throughout the United States and the U.K. He has written a wide variety of scientific papers for professional journals, a series of regular columns for an on-line newspaper, as well as book chapters, and a psychiatric textbook, EGO PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRIC TREATMENT PLANNING, now a psychiatric classic. Dr Widroe has also written the award winning books, DIARY OF A MEDICAL STUDENT: HOSPITAL OF HORRORS; THE SMART DIETERS CHEATING GUIDE; and SMART DIETERS DROP POUNDS. Dr Widroe along with Ron Kenner now brings us FROM MADHOUSE TO MENTAL HEALTH, the real life story of the amazing advances in the field of psychiatry over the last fity years