Harvard psychologist links America’s growing number of obese children & adults to psychiatric drug use

Obesity is an epidemic–or at least a major concern for many Americans. We obsess over diet fads, exercise machines, portion control, and The Biggest Loser, all in an effort to get our ballooning waistlines in check. However, according to some researchers, we are looking in all the wrong places for the reason why we’re so fat. Instead of oversized and calorie-laden fast food meals, at least one expert is starting to wonder if the cause of our nation’s weight gain is prescription psychiatric drugs.

Kickbackers’ motto: ‘Do no harm’ (to profits)—How drug company used kickbacks to get patients on psych drugs

TALK ABOUT death panels. The US attorney in Boston recently filed suit against the world’s largest maker of health products, Johnson & Johnson, for using kickbacks to get more nursing home patients onto its drugs, including one that was later found to be so lethal to the elderly it had to carry a black-box warning. The government’s complaint leaves little doubt that the drug company acted in a predatory way to increase sales and market share for its products, especially Risperdal, an antipsychotic often used to keep Alzheimer’s and dementia patients under control.

America’s exportation of mental disorders and drugs “Making the rest of the world crazy”

Americans are a generous people. We donate riches to needy countries. We send our troops abroad. We have exported some of history’s most influential cultural, scientific, and social inventions: democracy, fast food, and Britney Spears. Whether that generosity is helpful to other nations is another question. And so it goes with mental health. According to Ethan Watters in “Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche,’’ the American way of perceiving and treating mental illness has quickly and ruthlessly become the worldwide way.