The Marketing Of Madness - Are We All Insane?

[adrian_newbridge]

I just wanted to bring this DVD to your attention. I've watched half of it so far and oh my goodness, what an eye opener. It's all about how drug companies make billions from psychiatric drugs, how they don't test them properly, how they fake test results, how they invent disorders with the help of psychiatrists ! Then invent a drug for that invented disorder. It's fasinating and I would recommend it if you want to know the truth behind the drugs that are prescribed for us
Question, How come since psychiatric drugs were invented the amount of mental illnesses have gone up and the amount of mentally ill people has increased ????

 

[Kintsugi]

Hm. Old solutions to crazy people, as I understand it, was lock them up. Because what else was someone going to do? We have the technology now to engineer chemicals that manipulate a lot of different brain functions. We can choose to flood ourselves with dopamine. We can choose to make our brains stop uptaking serotonin. If someone started compiling all of these symptoms and splitting them into categories and trying to find normalcy with no ability to address those symptoms, what would be the point? If you were ADHD, you wouldn't know it unless someone told you, and if there were no such diagnosis that wouldn't be possible, and if the symptoms weren't treatable, what exactly would be the point?

I don't know the answer to your question. It just makes sense to me that as our ability to change the brain with pills increases and becomes more effective and specialized, the more things we can treat in people, and the more we can isolate things we see as issues, and so the more it makes sense to identify those issues cohesively?

 

[adrian_newbridge]

What worries me is that these drug companies are in it for the money, they make huge profits. How does my doctor know I have a problem with seratonin ? There's no medical test to prove it. There's a doctor in my area who diagnoses women with depression and all thats wrong with them is their thyroid not working properly.

 

[Kintsugi]

There is money to be made from medicine and poor doctors the world over. We are lucky that we can try to be educated and choose who helps us so that we can better assess and trust their opinions.

 

[Bachall]

We've always had people amongst us who were just a little off. My great-grandfather lived in the late 1800s (yeah, long generations in my family). He also appears to have had some kind of socially related disorder. He was one of those who, when the town got big enough he could see his neighbor, he literally packed the wagon and moved west.

They called them "pioneers" in those days.

Today we get drugs so we don't flip out when we have to walk through Walmart and have people bump us like we're not even there.

Or geniuses who talk to themselves and are so spatially unaware they walk into stuff and give themselves concussions on a regular basis? I had a professor like that in college, twenty years ago. He'd probably get meds for some kind of personality disorder, and treatment for Asperger's.

On the other end of the spectrum are truly damaged people who need help, who aren't getting it because communities look the other way now. Not our problem. There's programs, they should go get help, they must want to be like that.

Hum. Somebody hand me a stepstool so I can climb off this high horse. :P

 

[a3a2]

I have lived in a home with this mindset...."Doctors are all in it for the money, and no one should be taking medication." Well, guess what...if my father would have been taking some medication, I don't think I would be on this website as a sufferer. He was freaking crazy and beat us constantly because of his own mental illness.

My husband has a chronic illness. Over and over again I hear people give me this B.S. about how he should try this that and the other natural remedy, and forget meds. He tried going without meds for years. Life was hell for him, and for me. Now he's on meds, and his children and I can have a halfway normal life, and so can he.

My great grandfather took no meds. He lined up his wife and nine kids and tried to shoot them (with one bullet). The whole town knew he was crazy, but no one could or would do a thing a bout it. I think the reason we have more mental illness is that more people are getting diagnosed.

Do I think some people are misdiagnosed? You bet. Am I glad there are meds? You bet.

Stepping off my soapbox.

 

[a3a2]

One more thing....if my docs are making so much money from the drug companies, how come they are always trying to get me to take the generic drugs? DO they make loads of cash off of those as well?

 

[Bachall]

A3a4, right on. My stepdad, I knew even when I was a kid he needed help bad. Probably why I'm more upset today about my mom, than him, though by far the worse trauma came directly from him. He fell into the "he must like being that way" group as a young adult with very clear antisocial tendencies. The air force gave him an honorable discharge for he was diagnosed with some kind of mental instability (Vietnam), but did nothing but say, "Have a nice life."

My husband gets armloads of samples when he goes to the psych doc, because his med is only newly generic and is still an expensive copayment. He's a community college instructor and our income is below the poverty line. Neat, huh? Well, thanks to those evil pharm companies who distribute gobs of samples for the indigent teachers of America's future like my hubby. LOL!

 

[freakofnurture]

The world of psychopharmacology isn't a happy wonderland of miracles and saints, that's for sure. But it just as sure isn't a cesspool of lies and corruption neither. It's somewhere in between, like most things in the Real World.

Question, How come since psychiatric drugs were invented the amount of mental illnesses have gone up and the amount of mentally ill people has increased ????

Yeah, and how come there are so many surgeries performed since surgery has been developed to the point where you can safely do it on many an ailment of which quite a number has been first described only after surgery has been... Oh.

- There is an increasing number of mental illnesses being suspected, researched, defined and then codified for health practitioners to know about;

- the awareness of those mental illnesses has increased, leading to more people realising that they or a loved one do have a problem;

- there's less stigma associated with being diagnosed, encouraging suffering people to go have themselves/their loved one checked;

- psychology has matured as a science, thus being taken more seriously by GPs and being more on their radar, leading them to refer more patients with psychological symptoms to a psychiatrist;

- a lot of mental illnesses have become so treatable (pharmacologically as well as psychotherapeutically), that there's less fatalism amongst sufferers, leading them to seek help.

You get the idea.

 

[anthony]

And you can add the FDA to that list of corruption... just review the evidence that they got subpoenaed to release in the references within this wiki page, that backs your DVD based on the old pax medica modality: [DLMURL]https://www.ptsdforum.org/c/wiki/chemical-imbalance/[/DLMURL]

 

[a3a2]

I have seen a lot of propaganda out there attacking the drug companies and physicians. My parents actively participate in it, so this is a bit of a trigger for me. I know a few people who work doing research for drug companies, including one woman who works doing ptsd research (she has no idea that I have it). I can tell you that of all the people I know doing the research-not one of them is in it for the money. They are passionate about helping people. I am sure there are those who are simply in it for the money, just as there are in nearly every single profession.

I don't think medication is the cure all. Oh, I wish that it was! And I am not saying that there aren't any "natural" remedies out there that cannot be helpful. I would recommend you do your research carefully. Examine statistics rather than making decisions based on testimonies, and watch out for emotionally charged vocabulary.

 

[anthony]

I agree with everything you have said a3a2... but the issue is above the researcher IMO... many even get frustrated when they find something that does help an area, but the company (the higher power) won't manufacture it because there is no money in it, even though it helps a minority area.

Pharma has a lot of issues at the top levels... not the chemist / researcher level.