Charles Matthew Barber | |
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| Born | 1962 |
| Nationality | American |
| Citizenship | American |
| Education | Harvard University, Columbia University |
| Subject | Mental health, psychiatry, criminal justice |
| Notable works | Comfortably Numb, Songs from the Black Chair |
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Charles Barber (born 1962) is an American author and Writer in Residence at Wesleyan University who writes narrative nonfiction books about medicine, psychiatry, and criminal justice. [1]
Barber attended Harvard University, where he studied with and was greatly influenced by the psychiatrist and writer Robert Coles. After attending graduate school at Columbia University, Barber worked for ten years with the homeless mentally ill in New York City. He worked in shelters at Bellevue and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, and in supportive housing programs. Later, he worked in the criminal justice system in Connecticut, in prisons and halfway houses. Before becoming an author, he co-published scholarly works in criminal justice and psychiatry. [2] [3]
In 2005, Barber published Songs from the Black Chair: A Memoir of Mental Interiors, an account of his work with the homeless and also the story of his own experiences with obsessive-compulsive disorder. The New England Journal of Medicine compared the book to William Styron’s Darkness Visible and Sylvia Nasar’s A Beautiful Mind. [4]
In 2008, Barber published Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry is Medicating a Nation, a critique of the over-use of psychiatric medications, particularly antidepressants, to treat and medicate everyday life problems. Comfortably Numb was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, [5] and was called "a blockbuster" by Library Journal. [6]
Barber published Citizen Outlaw: One Man's Journey from Gang Leader to Peacekeeper about reformed New Haven gangster William Outlaw in late 2019. Barber and Outlaw appeared on The Today Show and on C-SPAN's Book TV. [7] [8]
In 2022, Barber published Peace & Health: How a group of small-town activists and college students set out to change healthcare, about the fifty-year history of the Community Health Center and the center's CEO Mark Masselli. Barber has spoken nationally about the book, appearing with Masselli and Colorado Senator John Hickenlooper. [9]
In May 2023, Grand Central Publishing released Barber's In the Blood: How Two Outsiders Solved a Centuries Old Medical Mystery and took on the U.S. Army. The Wall Street Journal described In the Blood as "the captivating, often cinematic story of how a medical innovation was improbably developed, fiercely resisted, and ultimately adopted". [10] The book was a finalist for the 2024 PEN America/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award and was named an Amazon Editor's Pick for Best Books of 2023 So Far. [11] [12]
Barber has lectured nationally and internationally at colleges, medical schools, and mental health advocacy organizations. He is a Writer in Residence at Wesleyan University and a Lecturer in Psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine. At Yale, he is editor of The Perch, an arts journal with a mental health theme. [13]
A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry. Psychiatrists are physicians who evaluate patients to determine whether their symptoms are the result of a physical illness, a combination of physical and mental ailments or strictly mental issues. Sometimes a psychiatrist works within a multi-disciplinary team, which may comprise clinical psychologists, social workers, occupational therapists, and nursing staff. Psychiatrists have broad training in a biopsychosocial approach to the assessment and management of mental illness.
Anti-psychiatry, sometimes spelled antipsychiatry, is a movement based on the view that psychiatric treatment can be often more damaging than helpful to patients. The term anti-psychiatry was coined in 1912, and the movement emerged in the 1960s, highlighting controversies about psychiatry. Objections include the reliability of psychiatric diagnosis, the questionable effectiveness and harm associated with psychiatric medications, the failure of psychiatry to demonstrate any disease treatment mechanism for psychiatric medication effects, and legal concerns about equal human rights and civil freedom being nullified by the presence of diagnosis. Historical critiques of psychiatry came to light after focus on the extreme harms associated with electroconvulsive therapy and insulin shock therapy. The term "anti-psychiatry" is in dispute and often used to dismiss all critics of psychiatry, many of whom agree that a specialized role of helper for people in emotional distress may at times be appropriate, and allow for individual choice around treatment decisions.
Psychosomatic medicine is an interdisciplinary medical field exploring the relationships among social, psychological, behavioral factors on bodily processes and quality of life in humans and animals.
Thomas Stephen Szasz was a Hungarian-American academic and psychiatrist. He served for most of his career as professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University. A distinguished lifetime fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a life member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, he was best known as a social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, as what he saw as the social control aims of medicine in modern society, as well as scientism.
Hypochondriasis or hypochondria is a condition in which a person is excessively and unduly worried about having a serious illness. Hypochondria is an old concept whose meaning has repeatedly changed over its lifespan. It has been claimed that this debilitating condition results from an inaccurate perception of the condition of body or mind despite the absence of an actual medical diagnosis. An individual with hypochondriasis is known as a hypochondriac. Hypochondriacs become unduly alarmed about any physical or psychological symptoms they detect, no matter how minor the symptom may be, and are convinced that they have, or are about to be diagnosed with, a serious illness.
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the largest psychiatric organization in the world. It has more than 38,000 members who are involved in psychiatric practice, research, and academia representing a diverse population of patients in more than 100 countries. The association publishes various journals and pamphlets, as well as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The DSM codifies psychiatric conditions and is used mostly in the United States as a guide for diagnosing mental disorders.
Biopsychosocial models are a class of trans-disciplinary models which look at the interconnection between biology, psychology, and socio-environmental factors. These models specifically examine how these aspects play a role in a range of topics but mainly psychiatry, health and human development.
Self-medication, sometime called do-it-yourself (DIY) medicine, is a human behavior in which an individual uses a substance or any exogenous influence to self-administer treatment for physical or psychological conditions, for example headaches or fatigue.
Peter Roger Breggin is an American psychiatrist and critic of shock treatment and psychiatric medication and COVID-19 response. In his books, he advocates replacing psychiatry's use of drugs and electroconvulsive therapy with psychotherapy, education, empathy, love, and broader human services.
Arthur Michael Kleinman is an American psychiatrist, social anthropologist and a professor of medical anthropology, psychiatry and global health and social medicine at Harvard University.
Orthomolecular psychiatry is the use of orthomolecular medicine for mental illness. Orthomolecular psychiatry has been rejected by evidence-based medicine and has been called quackery. The approach uses unorthodox forms of individualized testing and diagnosis to attempt to establish an etiology for each patient's specific symptoms, and claims to tailor the treatment accordingly, using a combination of nutrients, dietary changes and medications that are claimed to enhance quality of life and functionality as well as to reduce or eliminate symptoms and the use of xenobiotic drugs. Scientific studies have shown mixed results; although there are some promising results from nutritional psychiatry, some forms of orthomolecular psychiatry are ineffective.
Leon Eisenberg was an American child psychiatrist, social psychiatrist and medical educator who "transformed child psychiatry by advocating research into developmental problems".
Islamic psychology or ʿilm al-nafs, the science of the nafs, is the medical and philosophical study of the psyche from an Islamic perspective and addresses topics in psychology, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and psychiatry as well as psychosomatic medicine. In Islam, mental health and mental illness were viewed with a holistic approach. This approach emphasized the mutual connection between maintaining adequate mental wellbeing and good physical health in an individual. People who practice Islam thought it was necessary to maintain positive mental health in order to partake in prayer and other religious obligations.
Dennis S. Charney is an American biological psychiatrist and researcher, with expertise in the neurobiology and treatment of mood and anxiety disorders. He is the author of Neurobiology of Mental Illness, The Physician's Guide to Depression and Bipolar Disorders and Molecular Biology for the Clinician, as well as the author of over 600 original papers and chapters. In 2022, he was listed #49 on Research.com's "Top Medicine Scientists in the United States," with an h-index of 218 with 173,960 citations across 887 publications. Charney is known for demonstrating that ketamine is effective for treating depression. Ketamine's use as a rapidly-acting anti-depressant is recognized as a breakthrough treatment in mental illness.
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of deleterious mental conditions. These include various matters related to mood, behaviour, cognition, perceptions, and emotions.
Motivational deficiency disorder is the name of a fake disease imagined for a health campaign to raise awareness of disease mongering.
Danielle Hairston is an American psychiatrist who is Director of Residency Training in the Department of Psychiatry at Howard University College of Medicine, and a practicing psychiatrist in the Division of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland. Hairston is also the Scientific Program Chair for the Black Psychiatrists of America and the President of the American Psychiatric Association's Black Caucus.
Herschel Albert Prins (1928–2016) was a British professor of criminology. His career spanned over 60 years in work pertaining to forensic psychiatry, and his appointments included positions at the universities of Leeds, Loughborough, Leicester and Birmingham. His roles included HM probation inspectorate, parole board engagement, and involvement in mental health review tribunals and the mental health act commission. He worked with people with malicious activity, antisocial and disinhibited behaviour, unusual sexual deviations and people who behaved dangerously.
Mark Masselli is an American public health leader and community organizer. In 1972, Masselli co-founded Community Health Center (CHC), the largest Federally Qualified Health Center in Connecticut. He has served as CHC's president and CEO since the organization's founding. CHC provides primary care services to more than 150,000 patients at 200 sites across Connecticut. CHC was also integral in setting up and running Connecticut's COVID-19 vaccination sites, administering more than half a million vaccines. Masselli's work conceiving and building CHC is detailed in Peace & Health: How a group of small-town activists and college students set out to change healthcare.
Sangue dormido is a psychological syndrome reportedly affecting Cape Verdeans and members of the Cape Verdean diaspora. The condition appears in Appendix I of the revised fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) as a culture-bound syndrome.
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