Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis

James Davies argues that modern psychiatry has shifted from addressing social and economic causes of distress to a model of chemical management that favors corporate productivity. He details how the medicalization of unhappiness benefits the pharmaceutical industry and neoliberal economic structures by reframing systemic inequality as individual biological dysfunction. The text examines historical shifts in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the rise of the "happiness industry," illustrating how government policies prioritize returning citizens to the workforce rather than fixing the underlying labor conditions and social fragmentation causing their suffering.

Psychologists, social workers, and policymakers read this book to understand the link between market-driven economics and the rising rates of clinical diagnoses. It provides a framework for recognizing how standard healthcare interventions often depoliticize human struggle to maintain the economic status quo. Readers walk away with a critical perspective on the limitations of the medical model and an argument for prioritizing social reform over pharmacotherapy to address collective emotional distress.