Mental health as a business

The relationship between mental health, business and pharmaceutical industry, although it is a complex issue, is intrinsically related. Today, many aspects of our life are being “satanized” because the pharmaceutical industry is looking for customers up to the stones.

There are books, documentaries, platform series and a length etc., that open our eyes on that subject. But perhaps it would be no more that we had clear some of the examples of how pharmaceuticals have directly influenced the mental health of citizens, and helped by the media in general, the perception of them has changed on that issue.

Between the 80s and 90s, with the introduction of SSR medications (such as Prozac/Fluoxetine) campaigns that presented depression such as a chemical imbalance were promoted. This model, although simplified and scientifically discussed, was effective, especially in societies such as the American and the European, where the idea was bought by citizens that it was a biological and treatable disease with medication. That commercial strategy resulted in a great increase in diagnoses and antidepressant consumption.

Another concept to remember, was undoubtedly the boom of the benzodiazepines market (valium, xanax, etc.), and how it grew with the impulse of the idea that daily stress (a certain anxiety), should be treated with drugs. In the US and Europe, for decades they were massively prescribed, sometimes due to mild discomfort, said anxiolytic, which was generating a problem of drug dependence, which has reached our days with more force than ever.

In fact, today it is enough to go to the doctor and say that we have anxiety or depression, so that we can leave the job and we can afford not to go to work.

Another of the elements worthy of a serious study, which generates great controversy, although it is gaining adherents, is known as ADHD, attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity. In the US, the diagnosis of ADHD expanded rapidly from the 90s, accompanied by the growth of the stimulants market (Ritalin, Adderal, etc.). Many critics point out that there were educational and marketing campaigns aimed at doctors and parents, which expanded the diagnostic category and triggered prescriptions. And although today the debate on the diagnosis and on the pharmacological treatment itself follows, it is prioritized above other educational or therapeutic strategies.

Until the mid -1990s, ADHD, according to the words of the president of the DSM IV work team (the alleged Bible of doctors and psychiatrists worldwide), in his book Are we all mentally ill? wrote the following:

… In the 1990s, ADHD had occupied a tiny and sleepy corner of the huge and active pharmaceutical industry, with hardly any value. The stimulating drugs used to treat ADHD have been patent for decades and the generic versions could be bought by a few pennies for the pill.

But shortly after, when the DSM IV was published, the output shot was given so that new and expensive medications appeared in the market to treat this ailment. The great pharmaceutical industry saw a strong niche market, which has been drawing all the possible revenue over the last years.

Following the above, in 2000 it began to be promoted, especially in the US and then in the rest of the world, which could pay such treatment, child bipolar disorder, or what is the same, the mood disorder in childhood and adolescence. Today it has been denounced that some psychiatrists financed by pharmaceuticals defended expanding the diagnosis of children, which opened a huge market for atypical antipsychotics in minors, something that unfortunately seems to be quite widespread today.

And so, we could continue to contribute examples of this assault on the normality of people, which since the 90s has been besieged by large marketing campaigns that tell us that normality does not exist. The number of normal people has been reduced, as neither psychologists, nor philosophers, nor psychoanalysts, nor doctors, among others, have not agreed to define it in a “normal” way.

When in a society we start to consider what is normal and that is not, we end up being observed with magnifying glass in our daily behavior to see if some elements that could be susceptible to deserve the label of “mentally ill” are identified in our daily work. Undoubtedly, a constant and inexorable abuse that is immersing us in a society about medicated where human beings are only a number that has to be permanently rewised, permanently cancelled and sneak their freedom permanently. We are business, pure business.