Psychiatry textbooks are filled with errors and propaganda

Students of medicine, psychology and psychiatry, and allied health professions learn about psychiatry by reading psychiatric textbooks. They generally believe what they read and reproduce it at their exams. University textbooks are therefore a powerful tool for indoctrination – for arriving at the “right opinion” even when it is wrong. When I read the five psychiatric textbooks in Denmark most commonly used by medical and psychology students, I uncovered a litany of misleading and erroneous statements about the causes of mental health disorders, if they are genetic, if they can be detected in a brain scan, if they are caused by a chemical imbalance, if psychiatric diagnoses are reliable, and what the benefits and harms are of psychiatric drugs and electroshocks. Much of what is claimed amounts to scientific dishonesty. I also describe fraud and serious manipulations with the data in often cited research. Read more.

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