This fascinating picture of psychiatry since 1900 is absolutely essential, deeply felt and absorbing

An erudite, precise and impassioned history of 200 years of psychiatry … five stars

The chilling truth about mental illness: opportunists, asylums and big pharma – there are few heroes in this enraging study of a great failing. Fascinating

Desperate Remedies, which tells the story of mental illness over the past two centuries, is meticulously researched and beautifully written, and even funny at times, despite the serious content

A vital rallying cry. Scull convincingly conveys the long search for a better take on mental disorder

A blistering critique. Scull’s arguments are passionately delivered and while some might sound radical, they also have common sense

An indisputable masterpiece…a comprehensive, fascinating, and persuasive narrative of the past 200 years of psychiatry. Scull is unsparing in his critiques when motives of money, power, and fame have tempted psychiatrists to disregard the welfare of those under their care.

I would recommend this fascinating, alarming and alerting book to anybody. For anyone referred to a psychiatrist it is surely essential

Brimming with wisdom and brio, this masterful work spans the history of modern psychiatric practice, from the abject horrors of Victorian asylums to the complexities surrounding the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness to this day. Exceedingly well-researched, wide-ranging, provocative in its conclusions, and magically compact, it is riveting from start to finish. Mark my words, Desperate Remedies will soon be a classic.

Desperate Remedies is a harrowing, heart-pounding history that will leave you gasping. Andrew Scull vividly transports us to the dismal asylums and experimental operating rooms that haunt psychiatry’s past and then links that tragic era with our prescription-happy present. Dryly witty, but always compassionate, he shines a light on a century of medical mayhem and the horror it inflicted on the innocent. This is a riveting, powerful and utterly astonishing read.

Andrew Scull weighs American psychiatry in the balance and finds it seriously wanting. So this may not be the best introductory text for an aspiring medical student. But it is required reading for anyone who appreciates great writing, insight and outstanding scholarship – just the kind of people we want doing psychiatry

A riveting chronicle of faulty science, false promises, arrogance, greed, and shocking disregard for the wellbeing of patients suffering from mental disorders. An eloquent, meticulously documented, clear-eyed call for change.

An immensely engaging — if often dismaying — account of American psychiatry. Scull impressively balances the social reality that constitutes ‘mental illness’ with the ever-shifting rationales used to explain such unsettling behaviors and emotions and justify the social function of those who manage these elusive ills. Desperate Remedies is an important contribution to our understanding of a fundamental and still-contested aspect of human experience.

An important plea for psychiatrists not to be seduced into offering a cure that is worse than the disease…Scull’s engaging account of the development of psychiatry and psychiatric treatments since the 19th century shows history repeating itself many times over…The grisly part of Scull’s story is not gratuitous. It is the context from which modern drugs such as antidepressants and antipsychotics emerged…Desperate Remedies is a reminder of the tragic and barbarous measures that have often been inflicted on people in the name of curing mental disturbance

A provocative and often persuasive analysis of psychiatry…A must-read for those who have been – or fear they will be – touched by mental illness. If psychiatry is to survive, Scull concludes, psychiatrists must be more candid about the limits of their knowledge

Scull is well aware that psychiatry has vacillated between treating ‘the mind’ with therapeutic dialogue and treating ‘the body’ with surgery and psychotropic drugs…The medical discipline has never known and still does not know what it is treating. Scull directs the reader’s attention to the fact that after decades of research and billions of dollars spent, not a single biomarker for psychiatric sickness has been discovered

An intensely skeptical history and analysis of psychiatry. The gist of his argument is: although there have been undeniable advancements, mental illness remains baffling, and no discipline has done a great job of treating symptoms and understanding causes. Scull has written the best kind of ‘feel-bad’ book, lashing offenders left and right with his whip of evidence.

For me the greatest value of Desperate Remedies is the brilliant spotlight that Scull shines on historical and current truths about psychiatry. There is an implicit plea that is interwoven throughout the book for a measure of relief from the ‘devastating tragedy’ that envelops people with mental illness. Medical students intending to train in psychiatry would be well served by the masterful perspective Scull provides and the penetrating questions he raises for the profession.

Scull delivers a remarkable history of psychiatry in America…The final section…is a devastatingly effective chronicle of the rise of psychopharmacology and its tendency to regard all mental illnesses as potentially treatable with the right medication…This sweeping and comprehensive survey is an impressive feat

A carefully researched history of psychiatry, it provides a critical assessment of the psychiatric enterprise. In the rush to find cures for psychiatric illnesses, Scull believes that there has been a disappointing lack of focus on patients