by The Open University
Available in 20 free installments
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There is little question that the use of drugs to treat mental distress has become the dominant strategy. The historian Edward Shorter puts it graphically:
If there is one central intellectual reality at the end of the twentieth century, it is that the biological approach to psychiatry ? treating mental illness as a genetically influenced disorder of brain chemistry ? has been a smashing success.
(Shorter, 1997, p. vii)
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of mental health services and their relationship to business is the role of major companies which manufacture and market drugs.
Original Copyright © 2004 The Open University. Now made available within the Creative Commons framework under the CC Attribution – Non-commercial licence (see http://creativecommons.org/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/).
