Tag Archives: prozac

Profiting from mental ill-health

There’s a reason psychiatrists prescribe drugs rather than talking therapy: the latter makes no money for pharmaceutical firms. The New York Times recently led with a front-page splash about psychiatry’s propensity to prescribe pills, “Talk Doesn’t Pay, So Psychiatry Turns Instead to Drug Therapy”. That news is already widely known in the mental health field, but it has vast ramifications for Americans trying to maintain their sanity in our market-driven and medical system for delivering mental healthcare. What does the turn to drug therapy mean for the mass of Americans?

River fish loaded with Prozac: study

Residue from antidepressants leaves the body and ends up in our waterways. Sauvé said his study indicates the problem of antidepressants contaminating marine animals is probably global. Most treatment plants are not equipped to deal with pharmaceuticals. Montreal’s sewage treatment plant treats only solids and does not remove chemicals. “The chemical structure of antidepressants makes them extremely difficult to remove from sewage, even with the most sophisticate systems available,” Sauvé said. Montreal is experimenting with ozone treatment, which, according to the study, reduces the level of antidepressants in the effluent leaving the plant, but does not eliminate them. The research team found eight kinds of anti-depressants in the fish. The highest concentrations came from Prozac.

Note to Press Re: Arizona Shooting—Before Touting Pharma’s “More Mental Health Treatment Needed” Line – Try Asking The Right Questions

Every single time there is a school shooting, or some senseless massacre, the press are quick to start touting the need for more mental health treatment to “prevent” these tragedies—well before the facts of the case have been investigated. In fact, most of the press don’t appear as interested in bringing the facts to light as they are in making “recommendations” based on assumptions and calling for more mental health services/treatments. How one can make recommendations before finding out what actually occurred seems illogical to us, and we’re hoping we’re not the only ones.

“Plato, Not Prozac! Applying Eternal Wisdom to Everyday Problems” A look at how philosophy can be therapeutic

“Empty is the argument of the philosopher which does not relieve any human suffering.” — Epicuris

Emotional distress is not necessarily a disease. Modern psychiatry, however, appears to thrive on this model. Marinoff points out the growth of its major reference book, “The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual” (DSM). Marinoff says that just about any conceivable behavior can end up listed in the DSM and diagnosed as a symptom of mental illness.

This is in spite of the fact that a majority of the mental illnesses listed in the DSM have never been shown to be caused by any brain disease.

In 1952, the DSM listed 112 disorders. The current edition, first published in 1994, presents nearly 400 disorders. The target date for the next edition is 2012. One wonders how long its list of disorders will be. Marinoff claims “…the pharmaceutical industry and the psychiatrists who prescribe their drugs are committed to identifying as many ‘mental illnesses’ as theypossibly can.”

This, of course, results in the transfer of a lot of wealth and power in their direction. In the 1980s, psychiatrists suggested that about 10 percent of the U.S. population was mentally ill. By the 1990s, the number was up to 50 percent.