For the past two decades, the Psychopharmaceutical Industrial Complex has been the driving force behind the epidemic of mental illness in the United States with the promotion of biological psychiatry and a bogus “chemical imbalance” in the brain theory.
Fads in psychiatric diagnosis come and go and have been with us as long as there has been a psychiatry. The fads meet a deeply felt need to explain, or at least to label, what would otherwise be unexplainable human suffering and deviance. In recent years the pace has picked up and false “epidemics” have come in bunches involving an ever increasing proportion of the population. We are now in the midst of at least three such epidemics- of autism, attention deficit, and childhood bipolar disorder. And unless it comes to its senses, DSM5 threatens to provoke several more (hypersexuality, binge eating, mixed anxiety depression, minor neurocognitive, and others).
“The proposed DSM5 would be a giant step backwards for psychiatry. American psychiatrists should petition the APA to drop this ill-conceived and badly executed project.”
Despite promises to cut back on Pharma funds, 56% of DSM V panel members have reported industry ties— Zero improvement over the percent of DSM-IV members.
Two essays published in separate periodicals this week raise troubling questions about the extent to which psychiatrists may be unduly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry, and how this relationship may effect public trust in psychiatry. The upshot? The concern about corruption, or at least the appearance of corruption is palpable. Sigmund Freud (see photo) would not be pleased. Interestingly, one of the authors is Tom Insel, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health.