"This timely book is a careful and thoughtful analysis of institutional and political influences on the way psychiatry works today, and it provides a scholarly exploration of a problem that has consequences for all of us. Whitaker and Cosgrove's passionate critique gives us the resources to develop solutions and to mobilize voices for an authentically liberating response to questions of mental health." - Ian Parker, Professor of Management, University of Leicester, UK "Psychiatry Under the Influence is a thoughtful and well-researched expose of the current framing of mental health and illness, using the lens of institutional corruption to examine the dual influence of psychiatry's financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry and professional protectionism. This is a profoundly humanistic critique of how the scientific evidence supporting newer psychiatric drug treatments could be so poor, yet have 'street cred'. This a 'must read' on the medicalization of modern life." - Barbara Mintzes, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Sydney, Australia

Psychiatry Under the Influence investigates the actions and practices of the American Psychiatric Association and academic psychiatry in the United States, and presents it as a case study of institutional corruption.