James Davies Collection 2 Books Set (Sedated, Cracked)

James Davies Collection brings together two books that examine modern psychiatry and the growth of psychiatric medication in the UK. In Sedated, Dr James Davies draws on studies, expert interviews and detailed analysis to question why psychiatric drug use has risen sharply, even as levels of mental illness have increased in number and severity.

Cracked continues this investigation by asking why psychiatry has become such big business and why prescriptions and diagnostic categories have expanded so dramatically. Written for a general readership, it sets out claims about how everyday difficulties can be reframed as medical disorders and explores concerns about research practices, drug trials and the influence of pharmaceutical incentives.

Included titles

• Sedated
• Cracked

Key details

• Two-book set by James Davies
• Includes Sedated and Cracked
• Sedated references studies, expert interviews and analysis
• Cracked is written for a general readership

Synopses

Sedated

In Britain, more than 20% of adults take a psychiatric drug in any one year, a rise of over 500% since 1980, with numbers continuing to grow. Despite this, levels of mental illness are described as increasing in both number and severity.

Dr James Davies argues that mental distress has been mischaracterised, with a medical model placing the problem within the individual and their brain rather than as a reaction to wider societal issues. The book examines why this view has been promoted by successive governments and big business, and why Davies considers it misplaced and dangerous.

Cracked

This book asks why psychiatry is such big business and why psychiatric drugs are prescribed so widely, citing 47 million antidepressant prescriptions in the UK in one year. It also highlights the rise in the number of recognised mental disorders from 106 in 1952 to 374 today, questioning the scientific justification for this expansion.

James Davies uses insider knowledge to outline allegations including buried negative drug trials, antidepressants performing no better than placebos, and research being manipulated to produce positive results. It also describes concerns about pharmaceutical rewards influencing doctors, the creation of more disorders, and ethical and scientific flaws being concealed through mass marketing, concluding with the claimed human cost of the industry.