Doing Psychiatry Wrong: A Critical and Prescriptive Look at a Faltering Profession

The prospect that the psychiatric profession has hurt rather than helped many of its patients is incredibly disheartening; however, wrong diagnoses and improper treatment are all too common errors within the field.

Author René Muller presents a revealing look into how psychiatry has failed a great majority of patients, all the while recognizing the valiant efforts made by psychiatrists who maintain their integrity and serve their patients well. The result is an enlightening critique of the profession―one that pits criticism of psychiatry's current biological reduction and exaggerated promises against the accumulated wisdom of a profession that has struggled for a century and a half to understand and help those with mental illness.

René J. Muller has evaluated over 3,000 psychiatric patients in the emergency room and recounted the stories told to him there in numerous articles for Psychiatric Times, the most widely read psychiatric publication in North America. In 2003, a compilation of these articles was published as Psych ER: Psychiatric Patients Come to the Emergency Room (Analytic Press, 2003).