Book review: The bitterest pills: the troubling story of antipsychotic drugs by Joanna Moncrieff

"The Bitterest Pills: The Troubling Story of Antipsychotic Drugs." Joanna Moncrieff. Palgrave Macmillan. September 2013. --- Antipsychotic drugs have become some of the biggest blockbusters of the early 21st century, increasingly prescribed not just to people with schizophrenia or other severe forms of mental disturbance but for a range of more common psychological complaints. In this book Joanna Moncrieff challenges the accepted account that portrays antipsychotics as specific treatments that target an underlying brain disease and explores early views suggesting, in contrast, that antipsychotics achieve their effects by inducing a state of neurological suppression. Much of the book is a detailed and thorough unpicking of the troubled history of psychiatry and antipsychotic drugs, but this is far from a one sided story, writes Sally Brown.