Beating stress, anxiety and depression by Jane Plant and Janet Stephenson
This is a self help guide for people with anxiety and depression which grandly purports to offer ‘ground-breaking ways to make you feel better’. Its authors Plant, a professor in earth sciences, and Stephenson, a psychologist, have both had problems with their mental health and are keen to share their insights.
It’s a strange journey, with very broad subject matter, so much so that every chapter rightly requires a critique of its own. The book is at once curious display of scientific partisanship – once their personal stories are over, Plant and Stephenson dive into a detailed account of how mood disorders can be localized to particular parts of the brain a contentious assertion – coupled with a paean to alternative therapies. Later on, like two meddling aunts, the authors turn their attentions to UK housing policy and their dislike of ‘so called intellectuals’ who have the gall to suggest that God is a delusion.
In all this, psychiatrists are only worth consulting if they also have a qualification in neurology and are willing make available functional MRI scanning to their patients. Antidepressants are equally acceptable, but only in conjunction with laboratory tests, undertaken in private laboratories, which inform which neurotransmitters are lacking in the brain. If only clinics were so simple, and the research in this area so concrete. There are long sections on ECT and neurosurgery, the latter of which I can only imagine is included in the book specifically to scare people.
Following this mad scientist part of the book, Plant and Stephenson put on their hair shirts. There’s much talk of detoxing, which includes staying away from cut flowers, homeopathy and biofeedback, all presented as if scientific certainties rather than highly contentious and based on questionable studies. Indeed often when flicking to the references the source is not a peer-reviewed paper from a major journal, but a book, or even a newspaper article.
To be fair, there is quite a lot of sensible advice on lifestyle, and a reasonable account of psychological therapies. For a book which is somewhat hostile to conventional medicine, no consideration is given to encouraging a patient to consider their problems using a non-mental health framework. Indeed the orthodox mental health classification system is not just accepted, but expanded with an assertion that post traumatic stress disorder can be caused by a difficult relationship split. Not recommended
Oh dear looks like a dreadful book… will avoid
Hey! I saw you blog – welcome to the gang! – it’s added to the blogroll at the side here.
Well, it was either continue to flood your blog with links or get my own soapbox! Thanks for linking.
Thank you for this review. It certainly doesn’t sound like a book that I would want to even peruse.
Thank goodness some others see it like me. I confess I only flicked through the book, after hearing a deeply worrying TV interview with Plant, and was alarmed at the lack of robustness in it. I would give myself a B/B- for psycho-pharmacology, but would give the authors D for accuracy and A* for creativity!