Unimaginable stress, irrepressible memories, psychoactive prescription drugs make lethal combination. Is it the post-traumatic stress from repeated tours in war zones or Big Pharma’s drugs that are being used to treat it?
In 1952, the first hydrogen bomb was detonated and the American Psychiatric Association, APA, published its first book of mental illnesses: the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM.
No one, then, could have imagined that this seemingly innocuous manual would be more destructive, and result in producing more victims, than a nuclear weapon.
Since then the DSM has mushroomed and with each revised DSM untold millions carry the scars from its devastating effects.
Recently some of the nation’s top researchers, clinicians and scientists convened in Washington D.C. for the first annual Selling Sickness conference–examining how Pharma “sells” diseases to move the medications intended to treat them. Examples of Pharma’s disease-mongering business model abound, especially since direct-to-consumer advertising began in the late 1990’s.
Towards the end of May, the fifth version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), the iconic bible of psychiatry, is coming off the presses after much revision and delay. It’s bound to keep people asking, “Am I normal or do I have a mental illness?”
If you think most diseases are established with objective criteria and rigorous debate, you’d be somewhat wrong. The DSM has a strong track record of taking clusters of symptoms and wrapping labels around them, which lead to the accelerated use of some of the most toxic medications on the planet. How does this happen?
The pharmaceutical companies have broadened their horizon. It is not enough that they have 30% of middle and upper income white women addicted to antidepressants and that 20% of adults take some form of psychiatric medication. They now want to hook as many children as possible on psychiatric medication as well.