RaveThe Washington Post...[a] heart-wrenching new book ... This family odyssey, one Powers travels with his wife, Honoree, could have stood alone as a book itself, taking its place in the genre of memoirs on mental illness. Instead, Powers draws on his journalistic talents to explore the past and present landscape of mental health treatment in America ... In the midst of this sweeping overview, Powers gives us powerful stories of real suffering and societal apathy toward the plight of our fellow citizens ... the book is, among other noble goals, Powers’s effort to preserve his sons’ humanity.
Peter D. Kramer
PositiveThe Chicago Tribune...not an easy read, but it is certainly an important one for those who seek help for depression and the providers who treat them ... While examining the ins and outs of clinical research studies, Kramer also takes us on his personal journey as a psychiatrist, beginning in medical school in the 1970s at Harvard, where, at the time, antidepressants were largely discouraged and classical Freudian psychoanalysis remained the predominant mode of treatment ... Kramer effectively explores other limitations of psychiatric research, including the challenges of finding patients for clinical studies and the resulting tendency to include people who are not really depressed in order to meet enrollment quotas ... Kramer could have mentioned the reality that most antidepressants are written by non-psychiatrists whose training in mental health assessment is, unfortunately, often quite limited.
