Empire of Madness - by Khameer Kidia (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

An urgent rethinking of the Western approach to mental health, which treats the symptoms rather than the exploitative systems causing our distress--by a Rhodes Scholar and Harvard Medical School physician-anthropologist--offering lessons from the rest of the world.

What if the mainstay of mental health care involved cancelling onerous debt, giving poor people free housing, and paying reparations to the descendants of slavery and colonialism? In Empire of Madness, Dr. Khameer Kidia re-evaluates the Western approach to mental health, which medicates symptoms instead of changing the structures that harm the human psyche. A physician and researcher whose own family suffers from the psychological effects of colonialism, Kidia highlights the limitations of the Western mental health model by reporting from the front lines of mental health crises at home, in the clinic, and during a decade of fieldwork.

Clear-eyed and openhearted, Kidia asks the nuanced questions unaddressed by our current mental health model: How do history, culture, and politics shape mental distress? Are hoarding and burnout medical diagnoses or social problems? Why are schizophrenia outcomes sometimes better in poor countries without antipsychotics? Can a traditional healer treat mental illness better than a Western-trained clinician? For those living in poverty, can cash replace pills?

With rigorous research, cutting analysis, and illuminating prose, Kidia invites us to reimagine mental health as a global idea where our wellbeing is mutual and everyone's voice--patients, caregivers, and healthcare workers alike--matters.

Review Quotes

"Empire of Madness argues that the solution to our mental health crisis is not more psychiatry, but more justice. Khameer Kidia makes the powerful case that what we diagnose as individual illness is often a rational response to structural violence. This is an essential, paradigm-shifting book."--Anne Boyer, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Undying

"Deftly moving between incisive social and geopolitical analysis of what Western medicine calls 'mental illness' and personal experience as a child of empire turned Western-educated physician, Kidia unfolds one brilliant revelation after another. Empire of Madness is required reading for anyone who seeks to improve health care--it offers solutions as much as it does critique--as well as anyone who wishes to better understand their own mental distress. If you read only one book on decolonizing mental health care, this should be it."--Grace Cho, author of National Book Award finalist Tastes Like War

"In Empire of Madness, Khameer Kidia does something rare and necessary: traces the roots of Western psychiatry back through colonial violence and family memory. This book challenges readers to see how deeply empire shapes not just who receives care, but how we understand mental suffering itself. A vital intervention that asks whether the tools we've inherited can ever truly heal us."--Esmé Weijun Wang, author of The Collected Schizophrenias

"With searing insights rooted in scientific research and his personal experiences as a doctor, Khameer Kidia exposes the profoundly harmful impact of colonialism and capitalism on mental health. While the world's most powerful medical institutions target symptoms with endless cycles of prescription drugs, Empire of Madness calls for treating the structural causes of distress by addressing the economic inequalities wrought in the wake of imperial conquest. Boldly interrogating his own complicity in the system he critiques, Kidia brings a fresh, radical, and essential voice that reimagines the possibilities for global health care--and for a more compassionate world."--Albert Samaha, author of Concepcion: An Immigrant Family's Fate

"Blending vivid personal storytelling with history, anthropology, and medicine, Empire of Madness provocatively exposes the quicksand of a biomedical approach to mental health problems. Kidia highlights the importance of culture and context and prescribes the powerful antidotes of community action and social reform. A must-read for everyone interested in a refreshing, even radical, perspective on mental health."--Vikram Patel, Paul Farmer Professor and Chair of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School

About the Author

Khameer Kidia is a writer, physician, and anthropologist at Harvard Medical School and University of Zimbabwe. A Rhodes Scholar and 2023 New America Fellow, Kidia has worked on global mental health research, practice, and advocacy for the last decade. His writing has been published in New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet Psychiatry, The New York Times, Slate, Yale Review, and Los Angeles Review of Books. Born in Zimbabwe, Kidia lives between Harare and Washington, D.C.