Peace and Joy

princedarwin:

With over $14 billion in sales during 2008, antipsychotic drugs became the single top-selling class of prescription drugs in the United States. It is no joke that psychological disorders and their controversial treatment has jumped to the forefront in the medical revolution. Parents are being told that their kids need drugs to treat seemingly inoccuous problems like attention in school or hyperactivity. Old people are being sanctioned with dementia, convinced or forced to take the same class of drugs previously reserved for schizophrenics. Historic nuances from anxiety to insomnia are being reclassified by tendentious Big Pharma companies, demanding your money in exchange for their drugs.

But are they safe?

Anybody with half a brain cell understands the massive influence Big Pharma lobbying plays against the minds of American doctors. They are teased with expensive vacations, research funding, or just straight bribery in exchange for endorsing their latest drugs. Psychiatry is an almost too perfect industry for the corruption of Big Pharma. Diagnoses are very subjective, and based little on hard medical evidence like a typical doctor treatment. This leaves enormous room for the psychiatrist to exercise his own opinion (or his overlord Big Pharma’s) in the case of all his clients. Giant companies like Pfizer are veritably accused on an almost daily basis for countless attempts at pressuring doctors into over-prescribing their medications or endorsing more controversial ones.

Has this explosion of psychoactive drugs actually helped? During this same time period, the number of those with mental disorders has actuallyincreased by about two and a half times. Shouldn’t we expect the prevalence of mental illness to be declining? For children, the matter is even more distressing: mental illness has risen 35 fold. Mental illness is now the leading cause of disability in children. Has it always been this fucked up? Or is it something deeper; something private corporations have been exploiting for quite some time.

Psychiatrists are prescribing more and more drugs as a treatment for their clients. The question about Big Pharma influence is not when, but how much. The effects on the industry is obvious. They have worked their way into juvenile jail systems, where prisoners are drowned in psychoactive drugs such as Seroquel for things such as trivial as a minor headache. Big Pharma is pressuring doctors into prescribing their drugs for off-label uses. They are being told to downplay the often vicious side-effects while focusing on the supposed “benefits”.

More and more research shows that these drugs are ineffective, if not counterproductive to the treatment of psychological disorders. Reporters are finding it easier than ever to expose the track-record of doctors and researchers that have been bribed or influenced by Big Pharma. I hope everyone gets more careful about these things until medicine finds a better way.

READ MORE HERE: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/07/20117313948379987.html