Tag Archives: National Alliance on Mental Illness

Harvard Expert Ties Mental Illness “Epidemic” to Big Pharma’s Agenda

For any mental illness or passing mood swing that may trouble a person, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — better known as the DSM — has a label and a code. Recurring bad dreams? That may be a Nightmare Disorder, or 307.47. Narcolepsy uses the same digits in a different order: 347.00. Fancy feather ticklers? That sounds like Fetishism, or 302.81. Then there’s the ultimate catch-all for vague sadness or uneasiness, General Anxiety Disorder, or 300.02. That’s a label almost everyone can lay claim to.Drug companies are particularly eager to win over faculty psychiatrists at prestigious academic medical centers. Called “key opinion leaders” (KOLs) by the industry, these are the people who through their writing and teaching influence how mental illness will be diagnosed and treated. They also publish much of the clinical research on drugs and, most importantly, largely determine the content of the DSM. In a sense, they are the best sales force the industry could have, and are worth every cent spent on them. Of the 170 contributors to the current version of the DSM (the DSM-IV-TR), almost all of whom would be described as KOLs, ninety-five had financial ties to drug companies, including all of the contributors to the sections on mood disorders and schizophrenia.

Why Mental Health “Advocacy” Groups Aren’t Calling for Psychiatric Drug Investigation in Arizona Shooting: They’re Pharma Funded

In the wake of the Jared Loughner shooting in Arizona, we pointed out that the press seemed more interested in featuring Pharma-funded mouthpieces speculating on why Loughner wasn’t “treated” (drugged) and using this tragedy to start banging the drum for more government funding for more mental health treatment, (drugs) before even bothering to find out whether or not Loughner was, or had been, on psychiatric drugs. The logical question for anyone concerned with mental health would be; Was Loughner yet another in the long list of mass shooters already under the influence of psychiatric drugs documented to cause mania, psychosis, violence, homicidal and suicidal ideation that have resulted in 54 dead and 105 wounded in 10 such similar massacres? Isn’t that something we should know before spending billions more dollars on a pharmaceutically based mental health agenda? Shouldn’t we be investigating that instead of using this tragedy to get more funding for mental health “treatment”? So let’s just cut to the chase. The most prominent “mental health” groups using this shooting to cry out “give us billions more funding,” are themselves, funded by Pharma. Perhaps that answers the question of why despite the overwhelming evidence psychiatric drugs cause violence and even homicide, groups such as the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI), which claims to be a “patient’s rights” organization for the “mentally ill”, are not calling for an investigation of what, if any role, psychiatric drugs played in this or any other mass shooting in the last 10 years, we are.

Psychiatrist Asks, “Why Are People So Divided When It Comes To Children’s Mental Health?” We’ve Got the Answer…

Today’s Huffington Post features an article from psychiatrist Harold Koplewicz, frequently seen in the press leading the cheer for more psychiatric diagnosing and drugging of children. In today’s article, Koplewicz makes a plea to ‘Stop the Stigma’ which is preventing children from being diagnosed mentally ill. Pretty catchy slogan isn’t it? “Stop the Stigma.” It ought to be, it’s a brilliant marketing campaign, brought to you by Big Pharma, via the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), a group that masquerades as a “patient’s rights group for the mentally ill” but receives tens of millions in funding from Pharma.

Behind the Psychopharmaceutical Industrial Complex; Pharma-funded front groups masquerading as “patient advocates”

As a main component of the Psychopharmaceutical Industrial Complex, the so-called “patient advocacy” organizations have become the leading force behind the American epidemic of mental illness over the past two decades. Drug makers, and their foundations, funnel millions of dollars to these non-profits every year. In return, the leaders recruit their members as foot soldiers to carry out the latest marketing campaigns and to provide a fire-wall so that no money trail can be tracked back to the drug companies.

From Psychobabble to Biobabble: How drug money has come to dominate psychiatry

He who pays the piper calls the tune, and to a quite extraordinary extent, drug money has come to dominate psychiatry. It underwrites psychiatric journals and psychiatric conferences (where the omnipresence of pharmaceutical loot startles the naive outsider). It makes psychiatric careers, and many of those whose careers it fosters become shills for their paymasters, zealously promoting lucrative off-label uses for drugs whose initial approval for prescription was awarded on quite other grounds.