Posts Tagged ‘social phobia’

The Huffington Post— Creating Disease: Big Pharma and Disease Mongering

Sunday, June 20th, 2010

The Huffington Post
by Dr. Larry Dossey
June 18, 2010

You may think there is enough disease in the world already, and that no one would want to add to the diseases that we humans must deal with. But there is a powerful industry in our society that is working overtime to invent illnesses and to convince us we are suffering from them.

This effort is known as “disease mongering,” a term introduced by health-science writer Lynn Payer in her 1992 book Disease-Mongers: How Doctors, Drug Companies, and Insurers Are Making You Feel Sick. Payer defined disease mongering as “trying to convince essentially well people that they are sick, or slightly sick people that they are very ill.” This strategy has also been called “the corporate construction of disease” by Ray Moynihan, Iona Heath and David Henry in the British Medical Journal. “There’s a lot of money to be made from telling healthy people they’re sick,” they say. “Pharmaceutical companies are actively involved in sponsoring the definition of diseases and promoting them to both prescribers and consumers.”

Read entire article:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-larry-dossey/big-pharma-health-care-cr_b_613311.html

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Psychiatry’s new cash cow, ‘Internet addiction’ being pushed as one of the most chronic childhood “diseases”

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

Jennifer Van Grove
Mashable
October 5, 2009

Back in August we reported that reSTART, a rehab center for Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD), was the first facility of its kind to treat the controversial diagnosis in the US.

The disorder has yet to be officially recognized, but specific symptoms have been outlined, and it’s a subject matter that continues to undergo evaluation.

Now, new research from the Kaohslung Medical University Hospital in Taiwan shows a correlation in young teens between internet addiction and other psychological disorders. According to CNN and the research report, “ADHD and hostility were linked to Internet addiction in children,” while social phobia and depression were linked to internet addiction in girls.

Read entire article: http://mashable.com/2009/10/05/internet-addiction/

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