Heavy Pruning in Psychology's Garden of Good and Evil

Review of the book “Destructive Trends in Mental Health: The Well-Intentioned Path to Harm” edited by Rogers H. Wright and Nicholas A. Cummings (see record 2005-02409-000). This book may be the read of the year for mental health practitioners. It is the most sweeping critique (and often indictment) of the mental health professions in recent memory. It is occasionally freewheeling, unfettered, and polemical on the one hand, and precise and surgical on the other. Readers are going to either love it or hate it. Could it hurt the public image of the mental health professions? Yes. Could it help to improve the science and the profession? We hope so. Readers may not agree with much of it, but this book raises some profound questions about what mental health practitioners are doing and where they're going. The book is divided into three sections: “Political Correctness, Sensitivity, and Diversity,” “Mental Health Care Economics,” and “Political Influence on Science and Practice.” This book is in large part an attempt to amend contemporary mental health science and practice over a number of issues. Overall, this is a wide-ranging provocative book that offers a sweeping critique of several areas of science, practice, and the profession that may be valuable in stimulating discussion as we look ahead. It spends more time describing the problems than telling the reader what to do about them. It needs more on prevention. But it provides an important voice in a growing chorus demanding reform. The mental health field needs to pay attention to these widening reform efforts, separate the wheat from the chaff, and work to incorporate any valid proposals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)