🕐Download The Mind and the Moon: My Brother's Story, the Science of Our Brains, and the Search for Our Psyches by Daniel Bergner
The Mind and the Moon: My Brother's Story, the Science of Our Brains, and the Search for Our Psyches by Daniel Bergner
“A profound and powerful work of essential reporting." — The New York Times Book Review An important—and intimate—interrogation of how we treat mental illness and how we understand ourselves In the early 1960s, JFK declared that science would take us to the moon. He also declared that science would make the “remote reaches of the mind accessible” and cure psychiatric illness with breakthrough medications. We were walking on the moon within the decade. But today, psychiatric cures continue to elude us—as does the mind itself. Why is it that we still don’t understand how the mind works? What is the difference between the mind and the brain? And given all that we still don’t know, how can we make insightful, transformative choices about our psychiatric conditions? When Daniel Bergner’s younger brother was diagnosed as bipolar and put on a locked ward in the 1980s, psychiatry seemed to have achieved what JFK promised: a revolution of chemical solutions to treat mental illness. Yet as Bergner’s brother was deemed a dire risk for suicide and he and his family were told his disorder would be lifelong, he found himself taking heavy doses of medications with devastating side effects. Now, in recounting his brother’s journey alongside the gripping, illuminating stories of Caroline, who is beset by the hallucinations of psychosis, and David, who is overtaken by depression, Bergner examines the evolution of how we treat our psyches. He reveals how the pharmaceutical industry has perpetuated our biological view of the mind and our drug-based assumptions about treatment—despite the shocking price paid by many patients and the problematic evidence of drug efficacy. And he takes us into the pioneering labs of today’s preeminent neuroscientists, sharing their remarkably candid reflections and fascinating new theories of treatment. The Mind and the Moon raises profound questions about how we understand ourselves and the essential human divide between our brains and our minds. This is a book of thought-provoking reframings, delving into the science—and spirit—of our psyches. It is about vulnerability and personal dignity, the terrifying choices confronted by families and patients, and the prospect of alternatives. In The Mind and the Moon , Bergner beautifully explores how to seek a deeper engagement with ourselves and one another—and how to find a better path toward caring for our minds. Read more
Four decades ago, not long after the invention of DSM-III, a counselor tried to convince me to try lithium. Instinct led me to say no to this & other efforts by the legal drug pushers to “cure” me with the latest miracle pharmaceuticals. Wow am I glad of that. Robert Whitaker’s “Anatomy of an Epidemic” taught me several years ago that I’d dodged a magic bullet. Now this book brings us further up to date on the arrogant mistakes of biopsychiatry — but better yet, on the ways that people suffering from so-called mental illness are finding to help themselves & one another through relationships of listening, compassion, & respect. I’m especially heartened to learn that the Hearing Voices Network is growing finally in the U.S., may Soteria House also have such growth. Stylistically, Bergner’s sentences are sometimes way too long with too many parentheticals — elegant but confusing to parse. But that’s a quibble. This is a rich & compassionate book. I hope the psychiatrists can get off their high horses & learn to listen. [Edit, 27 May 2022] After seeing some of the other reviews, I felt need for a fuller review. So: Contrary to the claims of some of the reviews here, "The Mind and the Moon" presents plenty of scientific fact, including histories of the development of the major neuroleptic drugs (so-called "antipsychotics"), antidepressants, and mood stabilizers; in-depth discussions with research scientists involved in drug development (in particular Eric J. Nestler of the Friedman Brain Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Donald C. Goff, currently director of the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research); and placebo studies that — inconveniently for drug companies and their cheerleaders — show that many of the most touted drugs are no more effective then placebos in treating the disorders they claim to treat. — Unless, that is, one wishes to claim a drug as being effective at causing often devastating "side" effects — let's be honest & call them what they are: effects — such as tardive dyskinesia (common with most of the antipsychotics), weight gain & diabetes (Eli Lilly's drug Zyprexa), development of breasts in boys & young men (Risperdal), and emotional numbing, lack of libido, erectile dysfunction, and weight gain (common to most antidepressants) — to name a few. Berger also gives attention to the faulty science behind much of the "science" of psych drugs; though for a more in-depth treatment of both the science & history of these drugs I'd recommend Robert Whitaker's books Mad in America (2001) and Anatomy of an Epidemic (2010), both of which Berger cites. For more on the placebo studies, see Irving Kirsch's The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth Berger provides a lengthy "Note on Sources" at the back of the book for people who want to dive further into the science themselves — I'd personally wish for a more academically styled bibliography, but this serves. As for one review's criticism about "Personal experience presented as evidence" — personal experience _is_ a type of evidence. Why else would attorneys call witnesses in court trials? "The Mind and the Moon" tells the stories of three people's journey through the mental health system in the company of many of the drugs discussed: The author's younger brother Bob, diagnosed at 21 as "bipolar," ultimately rejected psych drugs and made a fulfilling life for himself as a pastor and musician. The lawyer David decided a few years ago to see who he was without antidepressants, and found himself beset by long-lasting effects of having been on those drugs in the first place — that, as of the end of the book, still had not gone away. (Do a web search on "iatrogenic antidepressants" or see the 2018 New York Times article "Many People Taking Antidepressants Discover They Cannot Quit" for more on the kinds of symptoms David experienced.) And Caroline, who began to hear voices that no one else hear when she was in daycare, and by middle school was given a colorful side dish of antipsychotics and other drugs with her breakfast, in a never-successful attempt to silence those voices. Caroline is more fully identified in a recent New York Times story adapted from this book ("Doctors Gave Her Antipsychotics. She Decided to Live With Her Voices") as Caroline Mazel-Carlton, an important leader in the Hearing Voices Network, which provides support groups for voice-hearers as an important alternative to the psychiatric default treatment of pharmaceuticals and psych wards. The Hearing Voices Network (HVN) originated in the 1980s in the Netherlands, with groups popping up in Europe, but it's not until around 2008 that groups began forming in the U.S. Thank goodness. The book and article describe it and other alternatives to mainstream psychiatry, such as Alternatives to Suicide which, like HVN, tries to keep clinicians out of the room so that people can speak freely without psychiatric interference; and Afiya house, a temporary peer-run residence run as an alternative to locked wards for people experiencing mental health crises that a 2021 World Health Organization directive points to as one of 22 examples "of the kind of care it hopes will ultimately displace mainstream psychiatric thinking" (per the New York Times article). Berger spent time with Pesach Lichtenberg, founder of two Soteria Houses in Israel — only two of such houses around the world — therapeutic community residences for people experiencing the distressing extreme states commonly called "psychosis." Soteria House was originally founded in 1971 in San Jose, CA by Loren Mosher, at the time head of schizophrenia research at the National Institute of Mental Health, with a second house also in the Bay Area opened in 1974. They ended due to lack of funding — at least in part due to NIMH's move, along with the rest of the mainstream psychiatric establishment, to reliance on pharmaceuticals. I was disappointed that the book made no mention of Open Dialogue, an alternative approach to treating psychosis developed in Finland in the 1980s, which is finally making inroads in the U.S. Common to all of these alternatives is in their treatment of people experiencing "extreme states" (psychosis) and other forms of mental distress as human beings who have agency, not just as walking "diagnoses" treated by way of 15 minute appointments that are mostly about a psychiatrist writing a prescription — at best. Common to all of these alternatives also is what I said at the start of this review: people helping themselves & one another through relationships of listening, compassion, & respect.
Publisher -> Ecco (May 17, 2022) Language -> English Hardcover -> 320 pages ISBN-10 -> 0063004895 ISBN-13 -> 978-0063004894 Item Weight -> 1 pounds Dimensions -> 6 x 1.05 x 9 inches Best Sellers Rank: #19,388 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #7 in Medical Psychopharmacology #7 in Popular Psychology Psychopharmacology #16 in Coping with Bipolar Disorder
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