How the Mental Health Industry Creates Disease, Works with Big Pharma
We spend a lot of time at NaturalSociety talking about Big Pharma and their role in the health care industry. These huge pharmaceutical companies make billions every single year by perpetuating a culture of dis-ease and illness. They exaggerate conditions, offer their solutions as the only viable treatments, and essentially market disease to the American people. But they aren’t acting alone. Some of their biggest sellers are drugs created to treat mental health issues, diseases, and symptoms. Doctors and professionals within the mental health industry, therefore, act as their top salespeople.
The Mental Health Industry’s Dirty Secrets
We’ve seen this issue arise more so in the last 2 decades than ever before. Through the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (essentially the bible of mental health for psychiatrists), hundreds of disease have essentially been ‘created’ and reclassified. Because of this, mental health ‘issues’ are skyrocketing and more individuals are on antipsychotic drugs than ever. Not surprisingly, as much as 70% of psychiatrists involved in the DSM have financial ties to drug companies.
“The bottom line is that it’s about the bottom line. So many clients, so much money. Keep the practices full, the insurance companies appeased and the revolving door turning.”
Case notes are taken with the idea that they may one day be viewed in a lawsuit. Counselors are told to, essentially, cover their butts and protect themselves, their companies, and the insurance companies from liability. In many cases this is seen as a priority over helping the patients.
As with medical doctors, mental health professionals may even be guilty of diagnosing the most serious conditions possible, all to authorize more treatment and therefore more money. What may be a situational condition, treatable with one or two sessions of therapy, could turn into a diagnosis for major depressive disorder, treatable with prescription drugs and ongoing, no-end-in-sight counseling appointments.
Millions of Americans have been diagnosed with depression and likely millions more feel depressed but lack a diagnosis. These people would often benefit from talking to someone (and eating better, but that’s another article entirely) rather than popping a pill. But when they are seen as a number or a dollar sign, they are shortchanged on true treatment and real help.
Though many mental health professionals are in their field for noble reasons and act with some sense of moral accountability, many more are caught up as cogs in a crooked system, the same system that sees selling pills as more important than being truly healthy. In a world where creativity is deemed a mental illness, dangerous drugs are being dispensed with impunity.
Well I’ve came to the point were I’m Done with Mental health they can stick it up there ASS!!! Suicide looks better!!!
I hope you are able to hang in, Bob… Take care~*
I had been in counseling for YEARS due to “depression.” One day I looked at my checkbook and thought “It’s time to get off the crutches….” I wrapped a nice gift for my (beloved, I must admit) psychologist and informed him of the decision….I stopped taking the meds and it’s been about 5 years. I am fine….maybe he “healed me” but I know for a fact he would gladly have taken my check last week were I still going. “And how do you feel about that….?” as you’re handed a prescription is a racket.
About a decade ago, a couple of years past my Diagnoses of Multiple Sclerosis during a real low point in my life I was put on anti depressants and given therapy to combat depression they figure I had since early childhood, undiagnosed. MS Disease Modification drugs had a “rare side effect” of depression that almost killed me and that is how they figured out I had it for so long..
After taking some group therapy and discovering an inner confidence I never knew I had after an “assertiveness training” workshop, I tossed the prescription that had so many side-effects. Recalling the horrible side effects as they tried different meds that did all sorts of bad things to me while trying to find one that had a positive reaction to me, I decided to smoke pot which helped me way more than all the prescription drugs they were offering as I could no longer take the pill they decided had the least side effects.
I still deal with the depression but now when it gets too bad to fight I smoke a bit of refer and it all gets better… But I had to change GP’s as the ones that had treated me refused to deal with me after I told them I had results from Pot which helped way more then they could. I also had quit using tobacco which had a lot to do with the depression, which started when I was between 5 and 7 years old and that is around when I had my first drag, quit just before my 40th birthday and life began to improve immediately.
Our culture perpetuates and encourages the supposed efficacy of the “1 pill fix” solution. Having worked in both psychiatric institutions, and in health food stores, I can say that there doesn’t seem to be much difference in what consumers ‘want’. People would come into the health food store ALL OF THE TIME asking “What pill/supplement will get rid of xyz?” Leading them to books/resources that outlined dietary and lifestyle changes, rarely satisfied- and they would continue to ask the basic question: “What 1 pill can I take to get rid of xyz? I don’t have TIME for anything else.”
In the psych hospitals, while there ARE, I’m sure, closet pharmaceutical reps with a dark agenda, in my experience at a Harvard teaching hospital, all of the Drs, Nurses, I worked with (and there were many) seemed to have intentions solely for helping the patient out of their anguish. Seemed more like more good intentions out there, than bad.
As for private practice psychiatrists….no clue about that. I imagine that there are sociopathic psychiatrics, just as there are sociopathic MDs, in the ‘healing profession’ out ONLY to make a buck.
But, just want to advocate putting ultimate responsibility on one’s health care onto each person, themselves. They are their own best physician, if they could just tune into what their own body/psyche is telling them.
Personal intentions don’t mean anything, the industry is about pill pushing. The good doctors and nurses have to do according to the status quo.
people who take meds get sick – end of story
Articles like this kept me from seeking the mental help that I desperately needed. I just recently discovered I have bipolar disorder (at 27years old) and for the first time ever I’m taking medicine that helps me. I spent the last decade or more trying to heal myself through a prestine diet, yoga and, positive thinking. But it was never enough. I still had no stability in my life.
It’s important not to paint a picture that mental illness is preventable or even curable.
I avoided big pharma because I was brainwashed that the whole system is bad. I encourage anyone that can’t achieve the level of happiness they strive for to seek the help they need. Even if it means taking a pill
I think you are not a real person, a robot.
Altogether far too cynical – there are some case points and truths in there, but sure as hell not as high as supposed here.
Stop pandering to whimsy, and report facts accurately – where are the facts and figures to back up these suppositions? There are may cases of keeping patients ill instead of treating, but to entirely brainwash and castigate people because pharmaceuticals work is just as bad. Look evenly at it – natural is the way forward, but is not the ONLY way – you note cases and illnesses rising in the last few decades, but this is simply as mental health is understood more – look at the field in the 20’s as opposed the 60’s and then the 00’s. This is not simply creation of problems to vaidate additional monies, but is a development as we understand it better – the splintering of ilnesses has been necessary to give a more accurate treatment scheme for those in need. Previously things like ADHD, autism, and many more were grouped similarly, yet ask anyone responsible or who has had close dealings with these cases and they are entirely different – yet before would be clumped together.
Be accurate and don’t just paint a negative picture or that makes you as bad as BigPharm, showing only one side of the coin – objectivity is necessary when you are playing around with people’s health. We are not identical, so not everything works for everyone – horses for courses if you please.