Warning: Psychiatry Can Be Dangerous to Your Mental Health by William Glasser, MD

Americans are notoriously overmedicated, and in no area is this more true than mental health. Millions of Americans spend billions of dollars a year on prescriptions to control relatively mild symptoms of anxiety and depression, symptoms that could be cured--not just controlled, cured--if people would take the time to see how they are choosing their symptoms. So goes the argument in Warning, and to be sure, the words “choosing” and “symptoms” in the same sentence can provoke skepticism, if not outright hostility, from many therapy clients. But Glasser spells out the underlying theory clearly and unaggressively, through the vehicle of a (fictionalized) series of Choice Theory “Focus Groups” where an assortment of symptom-bearers all look for relief. Warning is highly readable, if scientifically lightweight, and concludes with a pair of powerful (and not fictionalized) articles by other authors, each describing their encounters with modern psychiatry. You may be best served to start there.