Americans are over-prescribed antidepressants, says Charles Barber, author of the new book Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation. Biological psychiatry, he writes, is not a substitute for psychotherapy.

Currently a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine, Barber worked for years in New York City shelters serving the mentally ill homeless population. He is the author of Songs from the Black Chair: A Memoir of Mental Interiors, an account of his personal experiences with mental illness.

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