Despite record-high spending, mental health outcomes decline—experts say the fault lies with a flawed diagnostic system. Psychiatric diagnoses lack scientific validity, leading to soaring mental health costs.
By CCHR International
The Mental Health Industry Watchdog
April 4, 2025
The United States is spending more than ever on mental health—yet outcomes continue to worsen. Suicide rates are rising, psychiatric hospitalizations are increasing, and more Americans than ever are on psychiatric drugs. A growing number of experts and watchdog organizations argue that the root of the problem lies not in a lack of access or funding, but in the very foundation of modern psychiatry: an unscientific diagnostic system that pathologizes normal life. According to neurologist Dr. Suzanne O’Sullivan, author of The Age of Diagnosis: How Our Obsession with Medical Labels Is Making Us Sicker, “fad” diagnoses pathologize the human condition itself. “We are not getting sicker,” she writes, “we are attributing more to sickness.”[1]
The overuse of medical terms to describe everyday emotions and reactions has contributed to rampant diagnosis, driving millions into unnecessary treatments and inflating healthcare costs. Even the healthiest individuals risk being screened and labeled with mental disorders, creating a cycle of self-fulfilling illness.[2]
This mass labeling is driven by the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which has expanded over the years to classify more aspects of normal life as psychiatric conditions.[3] Since its first edition in 1952 with 106 diagnoses across 132 pages, DSM has ballooned to more than 300 diagnoses in DSM-5 in 2013. Comprising more than 900 pages, it is large enough, as one psychiatrist put it, “to stop a bullet.”
The consequences of this diagnostic inflation are severe: individuals who have committed no crime can be deprived of their liberty, children can be forcibly removed from their parents, and many are subjected to drug and electroshock treatments based on subjective classifications rather than medical necessity.[4]
Psychiatrists rely on DSM billing codes for treatment reimbursements through insurance, with the national average salary for a psychiatrist being $257,608 per year (exceeding $384,000 in some states).[5] Meanwhile, psychiatry’s dominance in workplace mental health programs led to $77 billion in spending in 2020.[6]
Psychiatrist Sami Timimi warned: “The use of psychiatric diagnosis increases stigma, does not aid treatment decisions, and is associated with worsening long-term prognosis.”[7]
Despite increased funding for treatment of mental disorders, mental health outcomes have deteriorated:
- Mental health/behavioral spending reached $329 billion in 2022—a 94% increase since 2012[8]—yet suicide rates have jumped 30% since 2000.[9]
- 76.9 million Americans are on psychiatric drugs, including 418,000 children under age 5.[10]
- Time in a psychiatric hospital raises suicide likelihood by over 44 times; psychotropic drugs alone can raise it nearly six times.[11]
- Studies suggest “treatment resistance” affects up to 60% of patients with psychiatric disorders.[12] Such claims obfuscate the fact that the treatment—not the patient—is at fault and drug therapy is ultimately unworkable.
- One-third of admitted psychiatric patients are readmitted within a year, highlighting treatment failure.[13]
- Involuntary commitment accounts for over half of all psychiatric admissions.[14] Yet mental health practitioners admit that forced treatment is ineffective.[15]
- A 2023 report revealed that 5 to 45% of inpatient mental health patients have experienced sexual violence during their admission.[16]
As TIME magazine commented, something isn’t adding up: “Even as more people flock to therapy, U.S. mental health is getting worse by multiple metrics.”[17]
DSM’s Financial Ties and Influence
The psychiatric diagnostic system’s credibility is undermined by deep financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry. According to research: 69% of DSM-5 task force members had financial ties to drug companies, up from 57% in DSM-IV.[18]
Lisa Cosgrove, Ph.D., of the University of Massachusetts Boston, warns that the “disease model” of psychiatry secured legitimacy for the field but at the cost of objectivity. “It opened the door to an improper dependence on the pharmaceutical industry,” she says.[19]
In a 2024 study, Cosgrove revealed those DSM-5 members who had conflicts of interests with pharmaceutical companies collectively received $14.2 million. The top 10 DSM disorders for which work party or task force contributors received financial remuneration were:
- Medication-induced movement disorders: $8,443,468
- Sleep-wake disorders: $1,892,430
- Disruptive, impulse, and conduct disorders: $1,059,910
- Obsessive Compulsive disorder: $973,851
- Depressive disorders: $875,373
- Neurocognitive Disorders: $872,277
- Schizophrenia Spectrum: $429,791
- Bipolar disorders: $311,751
- Elimination Disorders: $143,770
- Personality Disorders: $139,661 [20]
APA’s revenue surged from $10.5 million in 1980 to $65 million in 2008, with at least $14 million coming from pharmaceutical companies.[21]
The Exponential Rise in Mental Disorder Diagnoses
DSM-driven diagnostic inflation has led to an explosion in labels that often medicalize experiences. By DSM criteria, an estimated 26% of American adults suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder annually.[22]
Examples now classified as disorders:
- Caffeine Use Disorder, 8%.
- Depression: 17.8%
- Adjustment disorder: 15%.
- Restless Leg Syndrome: 13%
- Intermittent Explosive Disorder, 7.3% of adults
In children and adolescents:
- ADHD in children and teens: Between 11.4% and 14%
- Conduct Disorder: 6%.
- Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD): 6%
- Social Anxiety: 9.1%
- Writing disorders: 5% to 20% of school-age children.
Some estimates suggest that, when added together, those with DSM-labeled “illnesses” outnumber the U.S. population.
While the DSM gives the appearance of a clinical guidebook, it remains—by the admission of psychiatrists—scientifically unsound. Dr. Thomas Insel, former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, declared: “The weakness of DSM is its lack of validity…. DSM diagnoses are based on consensus about clusters of symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure.”[23]
Lack of Scientific Validity
People do experience depression, anxiety and sadness, children do act out and/or misbehave, and some people can become irrational and/or psychotic. This doesn’t mean they are physically “diseased” or that these can be verified as one would cancer or diabetes. They are not suffering from a chemical abnormality or imbalance in the brain.
Unlike physical diseases, mental disorders have no objective biological tests.[24] Diagnoses are based on subjective committee consensus rather than measurable medical evidence.
Psychiatrist Sami Timimi adds: “Psychiatric diagnoses do not have pathophysiological correlates… to support their subjective assessment of diagnosis.”[25]
A petition organized by The International DSM-5 Response Committee in 2013 also said the manual is “scientifically unsound (and) statistically unreliable.”[26] Further, it is “clinically risky because of many new and untested diagnoses and lowered diagnostic thresholds,” which will result both in the “mislabeling of mental illness in people who will do better without a psychiatric diagnosis,” and “unnecessary and potentially harmful treatment with psychiatric medication.”[27]
Psychiatrist Allen Frances, who led the DSM-IV task force, has since warned that DSM has led to the “medicalization of childhood” and a “massive, careless over-diagnosis” epidemic.[28] The epidemic of ADHD has “medicalized childhood, turning normal immaturity into a mental disorder,” he said.[29] In the 20 years leading up to 2014, rates of ADHD had tripled and Autism and childhood Bipolar Disorder increased 40-fold.[30]
A study using DSM-IV found that by age 21, 81% of kids had already qualified for one label of mental disorder. DSM-5 made things much worse when it turned normal temper tantrums into Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder.[31] Then there is Sluggish Cognitive Tempo (SCT), which Frances said “is a remarkably silly name for an even sillier proposal. Its main characteristics are vaguely described but include some combination daydreaming, lethargy, and slow mental processing. Its proponents estimate that SCT afflicts approximately 2 million children.”[32] The disorder was later rebranded as Cognitive disengagement syndrome (CDS) and it was claimed to be found in up to 40% of children labeled with ADHD.[33]
Atomoxetine, an antidepressant marketed as Strattera by Eli Lilly, is recommended as the treatment.[34]
“The last thing our kids need is to be misdiagnosed with Sluggish Cognitive Tempo and bathed in even more stimulant meds,” Frances stated.[35]
In other words, there is no verifiable biological test for depression, ADHD, bipolar or any other mental disorder. Yet millions are labeled and treated as if they were suffering from chronic medical diseases.
Psychiatric diagnoses also do not reveal chemical imbalances. In fact, psychiatrist Professor Joanna Moncrieff, of University College London, notes: “The theory that depression is caused by low serotonin is not supported by reliable evidence.” Still, patients are routinely prescribed antidepressants under the presumption of such imbalances. Author of Chemically Imbalanced: The Making and Unmaking of the Serotonin Myth she calls for patients to be fully informed that a chemical imbalance in their brain is not the source of their emotional issues, requiring psychiatric drugs such as antidepressants to “correct” them.[36] “My view on depression is that it’s a complex emotional state usually arising from life difficulties, rather than a biologically determined condition,” Prof. Moncrieff adds.[37]
Frances emphasizes: “Mental illness is terribly misleading because the disorders we diagnose are merely descriptions of behaviors, not well-established diseases.”[38]
Targeting Women and Children
The consequences of psychiatric diagnosing are not just financial—they’re deeply personal and often devastating. Women and children are disproportionately affected. Two-thirds of electroshock recipients are women. Children as young as five are prescribed psychiatric drugs. The American Academy of Pediatrics reported a 66% rise in antidepressant use in ages 12–25 between 2016 and 2022.[39]
TIME and Smithsonian have reported on the enduring trend of diagnosing women’s physical and emotional struggles as mental illness, delaying real medical care and increasing vulnerability to psychiatric interventions.[40] TIME detailed the history of silencing women through psychiatry that once believed that female independence was madness. Ambitious women were considered unnatural, and therefore sick.[41] In the 1800s, women who were hysterical were once subjected to an ovary compressor.[42] As reported in 2023, 82% of patients shown in direct-to-consumer antidepressant advertising were women.[43]
Federal Funding of Mental Health Failure
Federal healthcare spending has skyrocketed due to DSM-driven diagnoses:
- Medicaid and Medicare spent $48 billion on mental health treatment in 2019.[44]
- Medicaid spending for adults with any mental illness accounts for one-third of the total Medicaid spending for non-elderly adults enrolled only in Medicaid.[45]
- Medicaid’s spending on antidepressants alone rose from $1 billion in 2017 to $1.12 billion in 2021.[46]
- In 2019, psychotherapeutic agents—including antipsychotics and antidepressants—were the third most expensive outpatient drug under Medicaid. That year, antipsychotics represented 9% of Medicaid’s total spending ($6.2 billion) and 10% of all prescriptions (73.1 million claims).[47]
- Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) are essentially funding “child abuse” as infants, toddlers and preschoolers are subjected to powerful drugs that can pose serious, long-term risks to their health and development. Medicaid and CHIP are the largest payers for mental health services and substance abuse treatment.[48]
- In May 2023, The Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology reported that more than one-third (35%) of children in the foster care system who are covered by Medicaid are prescribed psychotropic drugs. This is four times higher than the 8% of non-foster children under the same Medicaid coverage, who receive such prescriptions.[49]
- Psychotropic drugs include antidepressants, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, anti-anxiety drugs, and stimulants. Three of these drug classes carry the FDA’s most severe warning, the black box: Antidepressants for suicidal ideation; stimulants (ADHD) drugs for addiction; and anti-anxiety drugs known as benzodiazepines carry a black box warning due to “serious risks and harms,” with prolonged use leading to “clinically significant physical dependence.[50]
Peter C Gøtzsche, MD, an internationally respected researcher and author of Deadly Psychiatry And Organized Denial, debunks the efficacy of psychotropic drugs to treat DSM disorders: “Claims by psychiatrists that the [psychotropic] drugs do work have to be taken with a pinch of salt, not only because good evidence suggests they don’t, but also because those who run the trials almost always receive funding from drug companies.” He also says that psychiatric drugs are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer. This is mainly because antidepressants kill many elderly people through falls.[51]
Conclusion: DSM is a Failed System That Needs to be Abolished
Prof. Allen Frances was correct when he advised: “Ignore DSM-5. Its suggestions are reckless, unsupported by science, and will result in loose, inaccurate diagnosis and unnecessary, harmful, costly treatment.”[52]
Dr. Sami Timimi takes it further: “DSM should be abolished.”[53]
Prof. Thomas Szasz, co-founder of CCHR, advocated a model based on voluntary, consensual support rather than coercion and misdiagnosis. His concerns remain as relevant today as ever.
Until psychiatry is held accountable for the financial, social, and medical consequences of overdiagnosis, the crisis in mental health will only deepen. The solution is not more diagnosis and drugs, but a reevaluation of the entire system. It requires removing a diagnostic system that cannot be established through valid medical tests, and which wastes government and private funding, but, more importantly, it harms and wastes lives.
References:
[1] Hanna Barnes, “Our overdiagnosis epidemic: How a marked rise in the treatment of certain conditions – physical and mental – is harming, not protecting, public health,” The New Statesman, 10 Mar. 2025, https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/book-of-the-day/2025/03/our-overdiagnosis-epidemic
[2] Hanna Barnes, “Our overdiagnosis epidemic…,” https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/book-of-the-day/2025/03/our-overdiagnosis-epidemic
[3] Hanna Barnes, “Our overdiagnosis epidemic…,” https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/book-of-the-day/2025/03/our-overdiagnosis-epidemic
[4] Hanna Barnes, “Our overdiagnosis epidemic…,” https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/book-of-the-day/2025/03/our-overdiagnosis-epidemic
[5] https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/highest-paid-psychiatrist-jobs
[7] Sami Timimi, “No more psychiatric labels: Why formal psychiatric diagnostic systems should be abolished,” Int. Journ. of Clinical and Health Psychology, Sept.-Dec. 2014, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S169726001400009X
[8] U.S Behavioral Health Spending: A 2023 OPEN MINDS Market Intelligence Report, May 2023, https://openminds.com/intelligence-report/u-s-behavioral-health-spending-a-2023-open-minds-market-intelligence-report/
[9] “America Has Reached Peak Therapy. Why Is Our Mental Health Getting Worse?” TIME, 28 Aug. 2024, https://time.com/6308096/therapy-mental-health-worse-us/
[10] https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/people-taking-psychiatric-drugs/; https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/children-on-psychiatric-drugs/
[11] “Disturbing findings about the risk of suicide and psychiatric hospitals,” Soc. Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiology, (2014), https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00127-014-0912-2
[12] “Treatment resistance in psychiatry: state of the art and new directions,” Molecular Psychiatry, July 2021, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8960394/
[13] “Readmission of Patients to Acute Psychiatric Hospitals: Influential Factors and Interventions to Reduce Psychiatric Readmission Rates,” Healthcare (Basel). 2022 Sep 19;10(9):1808, doi: 10.3390/healthcare10091808, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9498532/
[14] “National Mental Health Services Survey (N-MHSS): 2018 Data on Mental Health Treatment Facilities – Data on Mental Health Treatment Facilities,” SAMSHA, 2019; Christopher Lane, Ph.D., “When Psychiatric Treatment Isn’t Voluntary,” Psychology Today, 31 Mar. 2023, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/side-effects/202303/when-psychiatric-treatment-isnt-voluntary
[15] “Forcing homeless people into mental health treatment isn’t the way to solve homelessness,” Los Angeles Times, 28 Jan. 2020, https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-01-28/homeless-people-mental-health-treatment-homelessness
[17] https://www.cchrint.org/2024/11/22/280b-invested-mental-health-worsens-cchr-demands-audit-and-accountability/; Jamie Ducharme, “America Has Reached Peak Therapy. Why Is Our Mental Health Getting Worse?” TIME, 28 Aug. 2024, https://time.com/6308096/therapy-mental-health-worse-us/
[18] Lisa Cosgrove, Sheldon Krimsky, “A Comparison of DSM-IV and DSM-5 Panel Members’ Financial Associations with Industry: A Pernicious Problem Persists,” PLOS Medicine, 13 March 2012, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3302834/
[19] https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-disorders/psychiatristsphysicians-on-lack-of-any-medicalscientific-tests/; Lisa Cosgrove, Emily E. Wheeler, “Drug Firms, the Codification of Diagnostic Categories, and Bias in Clinical Guidelines,” University of Massachusetts Boston Scholar Works at UMass Boston, Fall 2013, https://scholarworks.umb.edu/counseling_faculty_pubs/9/
[20] https://www.cchrint.org/2024/01/19/cchr-applauds-study-exposing-financial-ties-between-dsm-contributors-and-pharma/; Lisa Congrove, et al., “Undisclosed financial conflicts of interest in DSM-5-TR: cross sectional analysis,” BMJ, 10 Jan. 2024, https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-076902
[21] Lisa Cosgrove, Emily E. Wheeler, “Drug Firms, the Codification of Diagnostic Categories, and Bias in Clinical Guidelines,” University of Massachusetts Boston, ScholarWorks at UMass Boston, Fall 2013, https://scholarworks.umb.edu/counseling_faculty_pubs/9/
[23] Thomas Insel, “Transforming Diagnosis,” NIMH Website, 20 Apr. 2013, https://psychrights.org/2013/130429NIMHTransformingDiagnosis.htm
[24] https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-disorders/no-medical-tests-exist/
[25] Sami Timimi, “No more psychiatric labels…” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S169726001400009X
[26] Katti Gray, “Are we over-diagnosing mental illness?” CNN, 18 Mar. 2013, https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/16/health/mental-illness-overdiagnosis
[27] International DSM-5 Response Committee Statement of Concerns over the DSM-5, circa March 2013
[28] Hanna Barnes, “Our overdiagnosis epidemic…,” https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/book-of-the-day/2025/03/our-overdiagnosis-epidemic
[29] Philip Hickey Ph.D., “Allen Frances Still Trying to Excuse Psychiatry’s (and his own) Role in the ADHD ‘Epidemic,’” Behaviorism and Mental Health, 8 Dec. 2015, https://www.behaviorismandmentalhealth.com/2015/12/08/allen-frances-still-trying-to-excuse-psychiatrys-and-his-own-role-in-the-adhd-epidemic/
[30] Allen Frances, M.D., “No Child Left Undiagnosed,” Psychiatric Times, 18 Apr. 2014, https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/no-child-left-undiagnosed
[31] Allen Frances, M.D., “No Child Left Undiagnosed…,” https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/no-child-left-undiagnosed
[32] Allen Frances, M.D., “No Child Left Undiagnosed…,” https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/no-child-left-undiagnosed
[33] https://www.additudemag.com/cognitive-disengagement-syndrome-overview-symptoms-add-adhd/
[34] Phillip Hickey, Ph.D., “Sluggish Cognitive Tempo – A New Diagnosis?,” Behaviorism and Mental Health, 29 Apr. 2014, https://www.behaviorismandmentalhealth.com/2014/04/29/sluggish-cognitive-tempo-a-new-diagnosis/
[35] Allen Frances, M.D., “No Child Left Undiagnosed…,” https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/no-child-left-undiagnosed
[36] https://www.cchrint.org/2025/01/24/new-book-further-unravels-myth-of-chemical-imbalance/; “‘Chemically Imbalanced’: A Book Review, A new history of antidepressants challenges the evidence supporting their use,” Psychology Today, 16 Jan 2025, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/side-effects/202501/chemically-imbalanced-a-book-review; “Medicating misery by doling out antidepressants is based on a myth: NHS psychiatrist Professor Joanna Moncrieff reveals the shameful truth about Big Pharma,” Daily Mail, 13 Jan. 2025, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-14279653/Medicating-misery-antidepressants-myth-NHS-psychiatrist-PROFESSOR-JOANNA-MONCRIEFF.html
[37] https://www.cchrint.org/2025/01/24/new-book-further-unravels-myth-of-chemical-imbalance/; “Medicating misery…” Daily Mail, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-14279653/Medicating-misery-antidepressants-myth-NHS-psychiatrist-PROFESSOR-JOANNA-MONCRIEFF.html
[38] https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-disorders/psychiatristsphysicians-on-lack-of-any-medicalscientific-tests/; Allen J Frances M.D., “What’s in a Name?” Psychology Today, 5 Apr. 2015, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/dsm5-in-distress/201504/whats-in-name
[41] https://time.com/6074783/psychiatry-history-women-mental-health/
[42] https://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2024/1/2/female-hysteria-throughout-history
[44] Anita Soni, PhD, MBA, “STATISTICAL BRIEF #539, Healthcare Expenditures for Treatment of Mental Disorders: Estimates for Adults Ages 18 and Older, U.S. Civilian Noninstitutionalized Population, 2019,” National Library of Medicine, Feb. 2022, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK581181/
[45] Heather Saunders, et al., “5 Key Facts About Medicaid Coverage for Adults with Mental Illness,” KFF, 21 Feb. 2025, https://www.kff.org/mental-health/issue-brief/5-key-facts-about-medicaid-coverage-for-adults-with-mental-illness/
[46] Mohamed Elmarasi, Brian Fuehrlein, “US Medicaid program: An analysis of the spending and utilization patterns for antidepressants from 2017 to 2021,” Explor Res Clin Soc Pharm., 2023 Dec 5:13:100392, doi: 10.1016/j.rcsop.2023.100392, Mar. 2024, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38149102/
[47] https://www.cchrint.org/2024/12/06/push-for-de-prescribing-as-418000-kids-aged-0-5-psychotropic-drugs/, citing “Descriptive Trends in Medicaid Antipsychotic Prescription Claims and Expenditures, 2016 – 2021,” The Jour. of Behavioral Health Services and Research, 10 July 2024,
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11414-024-09889-0
[48] https://www.cchrint.org/2024/12/06/push-for-de-prescribing-as-418000-kids-aged-0-5-psychotropic-drugs/, citing “2023 Medicaid & CHIP Beneficiaries at a Glance: Child & Adolescent Behavioral Health,” Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Oct. 2023, https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/quality-of-care/downloads/beneficiary-ataglance-2023.pdf
[49] https://www.cchrint.org/2023/08/09/foster-children-4x-more-psychotropic-drugs/; Rachael J. Keefe, “Psychotropic Medication Prescribing: Youth in Foster Care Compared with Other Medicaid Enrollees,” Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, 2023 May;33(4):149-155. doi: 10.1089/cap.2022.0092, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37204275/; “Children in Foster Care Much More Likely to be Prescribed Psychotropic Medications Compared with Non-Foster Children in Medicaid Program,” American Academy of Pediatrics, 7 Oct. 2021, https://www.aap.org/en/news-room/news-releases/aap/2021/children-in-foster-care-much-more-likely-to-be-prescribed-psychotropic-medications-compared-with-non-foster-children-in-medicaid-program/
[50] https://www.cchrint.org/2023/08/09/foster-children-4x-more-psychotropic-drugs/; “Suicidality in Children and Adolescents Being Treated with Antidepressant Medications,” Food and Drug Administration, https://www.fda.gov/drugs/postmarket-drug-safety-information-patients-and-providers/suicidality-children-and-adolescents-being-treated-antidepressant-medications; “FDA updating warnings to improve safe use of prescription stimulants used to treat ADHD and other conditions,” Food and Drug Administration, 11 May 2023, https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-and-availability/fda-updating-warnings-improve-safe-use-prescription-stimulants-used-treat-adhd-and-other-conditions; “FDA requiring Boxed Warning updated to improve safe use of benzodiazepine drug class. Includes potential for abuse, addiction, and other serious risks,” Food and Drug Administration, 23 Sept. 2020, https://www.fda.gov/media/142368/download
[51] “Peter C Gøtzsche: Prescription drugs are the third leading cause of death,” The BMJ Opinion, 16 June 2016, https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2016/06/16/peter-c-gotzsche-prescription-drugs-are-the-third-leading-cause-of-death/; Peter C Gøtzsche, “Prescription pills are Britain’s third biggest killer: Side-effects of drugs taken for insomnia and anxiety kill thousands. Why do doctors hand them out like Smarties?” Daily Mail, 14 Sept. 2015, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3234334/Prescription-pills-Britain-s-biggest-killer-effects-drugs-taken-insomnia-anxiety-kill-thousands-doctors-hand-like-Smarties.html
[52] https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-disorders/psychiatristsphysicians-on-lack-of-any-medicalscientific-tests/; Allen Frances, “Does DSM-5 Have a Captive Audience?” Huffington Post, 14 Apr. 2013, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/does-dsm-5-have-a-captive_b_3080553
[53] Sami Timimi, “No more psychiatric labels…” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S169726001400009X
SHARE YOUR STORY/COMMENT