Psychologist Lisa Cosgrove, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, explained that More than 5% of young schoolchildren take psychotropic drugs daily. And although this was stated based on a study carried out to talk about the consumption of medical drugs in the United States, it can be extrapolated to any country, where psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry have not stopped generating mental illnesses permanently.
In 1980 in the United States, 30 million boxes of antidepressants were prescribed, in 2012 this figure had reached 264 million prescriptions. What was the reason for this rebound? What has happened from 2012 to today? Perhaps the answer is as simple as it is dangerous: mental illness has become a business that generates billions of dollars in profits.
In 2014, a book already mentioned by me in previous reports was published, but it now acquires special relevance because similar complaints are currently being prepared in various publishers; is about Are we all mentally ill?, from the distinguished professor emeritus of the department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Durham University, in North Carolina. But why is this book especially relevant, simply because its author, Allen Frances, was the president of the DSM IV working group and was part of the DSM III management team.
He himself confessed years later to having participated in said projects that After the publication in May 2013 of the DSM-V, there is almost no human behavior that cannot be classified at a given moment as a “mental disorder” and, therefore, susceptible to “solving” through drugs whose intake entails numerous side effects. .
Under the name DSM hides the misnamed Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This manual has already been discredited ad nauseam by doctors and psychiatrists from around the world, among them the aforementioned Allen Frances, who actively participated in several of the manuals, however very soon and in the style of The Empire of Pain by the American journalist Patrick Radeen Keefe, another journalist, Robert Whitaker accompanied by the psychologist Lisa Cosgrove, will see his book Psychiatry under the influence, translated into Spanish and very possibly into other languages in half the world, despite the different attempts to silence its publication . In it they tell the story how an allegedly corrupt conspiracy cataloged mental illnesses and triggered massive use of psychotropic drugs around the world. The person who writes the above is Daniel Arjona, a journalist from the newspaper El Mundo who on Friday, September 1, 2023, published, among other things, two important issues.
The first, the interesting words that Dr. Cosgrove transmitted to him by email where she put the point on an indisputable topic: (…) Over the past 35 years, psychiatry has transformed American culture. It has changed our view of childhood and what is expected of “normal” children, to the point that more than 5% of school-age young people now take a psychotropic drug daily. “It has changed our behavior as adults and, in particular, the way we seek to cope with emotional distress and difficulties in our lives.” And that is why millions of people around the world have fallen into the hands of psychotropic drugs with psychiatric endorsement. A real imprudence, a nonsense.
The second question that Whitaker and Cosgrove try to answer in their book, as reflected in Arjona’s article, is the following: (…) What is the thesis of this amendment to the entirety? Since the publication in 1980 of the third and decisive version of the DSM (today there are five, all of them under discussion), psychiatry has succumbed to institutional corruption on two fronts: that of big pharmaceutical companies and that of the “union influences” represented by an American Psychiatric Association voracious in defending and expanding its business. Having said the above, I encourage you to read some of the articles published under my signature on antidepressants and the illegal commission business in China, for example, where you can get an idea of the magnitude of the tragedy to which the humanityIs the DSM to blame? Categorically not. The blame lies with a system that allows large pharmaceutical companies to easily advertise “happiness” pills for all kinds of problems. Something similar to what happened at the time with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hypersensitivity Disorder). In the 1990s (1990), this “disease” barely occupied a small corner in the profits of the enormous and enormous pharmaceutical industry, the income generated by this disease barely reached 70 million dollars, but some years later, when The DSM IV was published, an enormous business possibility was seen. Psychiatrists had opened a door with their diagnostic assumptions and patents were created, beginning to generate a huge advertising campaign aimed at patients (the general public) and doctors. Everyone saw the sky open when it was accepted that with a pill, “hyperactive” children would stop crying out, and teachers and families would finally have moments of respite. The company “bought” said benefit and with the slogan “Consult your doctor”, In just a few years, a market has tripled, and is increasing, as society in general has accepted that it is acceptable to medicate children from an early age. It has been accepted that many university students talk about mental health and take medication and also, by teachers, mothers/fathers and doctors, that a quiet classroom benefits the emotional health of children.
In some countries, the consumption of this type of products, antidepressants, anxiolytics, is making, with increasing intensity, sick societies, where access to these drugs It is much simpler than it may seem to us. That is why, with nuances, lists of countries with enormous consumption of this type of products are periodically made, among which we can highlight, without the need to give percentages, the following 10: United States, Iceland, Australia, Portugal, United Kingdom United Kingdom, Canada, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark and Spain. As a fact to take into account, due to proximity, comment that in Spain, in information dated 2022, the headline read: The data after a decade of “medicine culture” in Spain: the consumption of antidepressants has grown by 40%. Giving two issues as keys to this increase: The improvement of several drugs joins the industry strategies and their use as a resource to quickly finish a consultation.
Could the prescription of antidepressants or anxiolytics have become an absurd excuse to get rid of patients in a medical consultation? I imagine that we will have to look for an answer for this in the future, although I am afraid of what we are going to find.
Perhaps, as a preview of future research, I will stick with one of the answers that Allen Frances gave in one of his many interviews to the question:
-Isn’t the increase in the number of alleged “mental illnesses” then due to both psychiatrists and the pharmaceutical industry?
-Certainly. Look, pharmaceutical multinationals, especially those grouped under the expression Big Pharma, have become dangerous; and not only in the field of Psychiatry. In the United States, for example, there are now more deaths each year from drug overdoses than from traffic accidents. Most caused by prescription narcotics, not illegal drugs. Of course, pharmaceutical multinationals are experts at inventing diseases to sell drugs; In fact, they invest billions of dollars in spreading misleading messages.
As I finished transcribing Allen’s response, a dystopia came to mind where I imagined drug cartels advertising their product in the media of any kind, without any control and with the approval of many members of a dystopian society, authorities, media, teachers, fathers, mothers, etc., who obtained a profit, whether emotional or lucrative, with the widespread consumption of said product.
Information sources:
Graphic: Which countries consume the most antidepressants? | Statista
Medication data: consumption of antidepressants grows by 40% (rtve.es)
DSALUD (magazine) no. 177, December 2014
El Mundo Newspaper. Friday, September 1, 2023
Book: Are we all mentally ill? Author: Allen Frances. Ariel Editorial – 2014
Originally published at LaDamadeElche.com
