Америкалық журналист Роберт Уитэйкер және психиатрия тарихы

American journalist

Robert Whitaker is an American journalist and author, writing primarily about medicine, science, and history. He is the author of five books, three of which cover the history or practice of modern psychiatry. He has won numerous awards for science writing, and in 1998 he was part of a team writing for the Boston Globe that was shortlisted for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for a series of articles questioning the ethics of psychiatric research in which unsuspecting patients were given drugs expected to heighten their psychosis. He is the founder and publisher of Mad in America, a webzine critical of the modern psychiatric establishment.

He has written on and off for the Boston Globe and in 2001, he wrote his first book Mad in America about psychiatric research and medications, the domains of some of his earlier journalism. He appeared in the film Take These Broken Wings: Recovery from Schizophrenia Without Medication released in 2008, a film detailing the pitfalls of administering medication for the illness.

An IRE 2010 book award winner for best investigative journalism, this book investigates why the number of mentally ill patients in America receiving SSI or SSDI disability checks keeps rising, despite the so called "psychopharmacological revolution." Whitaker's main thesis is that psychopharmacological drugs work well to curb acute symptoms. However, patients receiving prolonged treatment courses often end up more disabled than they started. Despite these results from several landmark studies in the 1970s, in the 1980s pharmaceutical companies such as Eli Lily together with the American Psychiatric Association began more aggressively pushing second generation anti depressants and anti psychotics on psychiatric patients. Many prominent academic psychiatrists worked as key opinion leaders for the pharmaceutical companies, and were compensated millions of dollars.

In 2015 Whitaker co authored another book about the psychiatric research and medications. The book is critical of the drug industry influence on the field of psychiatry.