ABSTRACT
In this book, I provide an overview of psychiatry’s lack of progress in advancing the efficacy of psychotropic drugs and the development of objective biological markers that would allow us an independent means of validating psychiatric diagnoses. Indeed, the lack of objective markers, not to mention our lack of progress in establishing the pathogenesis of mental disorders, blocked the original goal of a transcendent diagnostic system for the DSM-5, the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. These failures demand explanations, all the more so since we have witnessed 60 years of elegant biological research and technological developments such as functional magnetic resonance imaging. In addition, mortality rates and outcomes in schizophrenia have worsened while rates of addiction, depression, and suicide have risen, despite a flood of new antidepressants, antipsychotics, and psychotherapies. Psychiatry has repeatedly promised significant advances in diagnosis and treatment, but, from the standpoint of the clinicians, patients, and families, they have not materialized. As a result, multiple authors have published books highly critical of the field, but these have been of little help to clinicians or patients. The present volume aims to provide a critical examination of our failures and the comparative neglect of psychosocial factors but will also provide clinical notes and recommendations helpful to clinicians, patients, and families.
