This controversial book overturns the claim that psychiatric drugs work by correcting chemical imbalance and analyzes the professional, commercial and political vested interests that have shaped this view. It provides a comprehensive critique of research on drugs including antidepressants, antipsychotics and mood stabilizers. Moncrieff describes the subject of the book as the story by which drugs first came to be seen as specific treatments for specific mental disorders or collections of symptoms and whether or not this way of thinking about drugs is justified.