Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America is a book by Robert Whitaker published in 2010 by Crown.

[1][2][3] Whitaker asks why the number of Americans who receive government disability for mental illness approximately doubled since 1987.

This also followed the industry's development of "magic bullets" that treat people with, for example, diabetes, which according to Whitaker provided an analogy to sell the idea of these drugs to the public.

Whitaker further criticizes the magic bullet theory by attacking the historical notion that the "invention of the antipsychotic Thorazine" emptied the asylums.

Whitaker traces the effects of what looks like an iatrogenic epidemic:[13] the drugs that patients receive can perturb their normal brain function.

He views the "hyping" of the top-selling atypical antipsychotics as "one of the more embarrassing episodes in psychiatry's history, as one government study after another failed to find that they were any better than the first-generation anti-psychotics.

"[15] Whitaker speaks warmly of Open Dialogue, an organisation of care documented by professor psychologist Jaakko Seikkula at Keropudas Hospital in Tornio in Lapland where drugs are given to patients only on a limited basis.

[17] Whitaker spent a year and a half researching for this book,[14] and maintains a website listing some relevant studies.