In 1967, leading persons in the field of psychiatry met in Puerto Rico to map out a vision of the future. The vision, to create a range of psychiatric drugs which regulate every aspect of human behavior.
Today, over 100 million people worldwide are on psychiatric drugs, how did this happen? Some people believe psychiatrists convinced them they were sick. Could this be the case? While generating a healthy income claiming to be medical professionals, psychiatrists will openly confess their profession is devoid of science. Psychiatrists do not have any specific blood tests which are definitive for any mental illness whatsoever. In fact, there are no current available tests for psychiatrist to verify any of their diagnosis.
Everyday psychotropic drugs cause serious adverse reactions, and while psychiatrists and drug companies fully understand the dangers of the drugs they sell, their unsuspecting customers are left to suffer the consequences. In addition to crippling hundreds of people daily, each month psychiatric drugs kill an estimated 3,000 people. The human devastation wouldn’t have reached these levels if psychiatrists hadn’t worked hand in hand with drug companies to promote the drugs to doctors throughout the world. Today, 70% of all psychiatric drugs are prescribed by general physicians, this is accomplished through marketing. With over 374 mental disorders filling psychiatry’s diagnostic manual, business is booming. In fact, pharmaceutical companies have expanded their roster of psychotropic drugs from 44 in 1966 to 174 today. The top five psychotropic drugs combined gross more money than the gross national product of over half the countries on Earth. All together, the psychiatric industry takes in over 300 billion dollars a year. So, how did all this happen?
Before the era of psychotropic drugs, psychiatrists occupied the lowest position in the medical profession. So, what changed all of this? The (DSM) or Diagnostic and Statistical manual. Since the DSM’s first edition in 1952, the number of diagnosis has continued to grow. In fact, the manual has grown from a small 130 page booklet to a bloated 886 page psychiatric bible. It is only through the use of this book that psychiatrists can diagnose, drug and bill for services. In fact, the psychiatric industry currently uses the DSM to collect over 72 billion dollars in private and government insurance money per year.
While psychiatrists use the word “chemical imbalance” to make billions of dollars by moving vast quantities of psychotropic drugs into the bodies of unsuspecting consumers, the public has paid the ultimate price. Half of all Americans who commit suicide are on psychotropic drugs. Annually, psychotropic drugs are estimated to kill more than two and a half times more people than are killed by homicide! So, who is entrusted with protecting the public against these psychotropic drugs?
In the United State it is the (FDA) or Food and Drug Administration, whose psychiatric drug advisory panels are dominated by psychiatrists who shuttle between the drug industry, academia, private practice and government. The problem? Psychiatrists on the drug advisory panels almost always have conflicts of interest involving the drugs they are evaluating. For example, the FDA drug evaluation panel that approved the antidepressant Paxil was full of psychiatrists who had financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry. These conflicts of interest have actually been rampant enough to prompt congressional investigation.
This network of financial conflict of interest between psychiatry, the drug industry and the FDA became even more entrenched in 1992 after passage of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, also known as (PDUFA). Through this bill, the FDA would be paid a fee of $100,000 per drug to ensure that psychotropic medications would be rushed through the approval process into the hands of prescribers faster than ever. This fast track has traded safety for sales. Since the passage of PDUFA, time spent on drug evaluation plunged from 2 years in 1992 to only six months four years later. Meanwhile, the number of new drugs released to the public doubled. Though fast tracking is disastrous for public safety, it reaps huge profits for psychiatry and the drug industry because the sooner a drug is approved, the sooner it makes money.
Everyday, the average psychotropic drug grosses over 7.7 million dollars. One drug, Zyprexa, rakes in almost 12 million dollars daily. Even though the FDA charges over one million dollars per new drug application, the pharmaceutical fast track shows no signs of slowing.
From the smallest infant to the oldest senior citizen, no one is immune from any of the hundreds of fictitious disorders invented by psychiatrists to fuel a multi-billion dollar psychotropic drug industry. An apparent flood of mental illness is all around us, where is this coming from? Could it be psychiatrists, whose diagnostic and statistical manual can label anyone walking the planet mentally ill.
Example: Shyness-a common life situation that was voted by psychiatrists into their diagnostic and statistical manual as social anxiety disorder. Social anxiety disorder is just one of many made up psychiatric disorders fueling the boom in psychotropic drug prescription. Psychiatrists work to promote what the latest disease is going to be, these days bi-polar is disorder getting the promotion.
Spearheading the popularizing of bi-polar disorder is psychiatrist Dr. Joseph Biederman, a paid speaker, adviser and researcher for 25 different drug companies. Due to the constant promotion by Dr. Biederman and his colleagues, there has been a 4000% increase of the diagnosis of bi-polar in children since 1994. In 2008, Dr. Biederman was exposed by a senate investigation for failing to report 1.6 million dollars in personal income from pharmaceutical companies. Because of the bi-polar fad created by Dr. Biederman, anti-psychotics, some of the most powerful psychotropic drugs being prescribed are now psychiatry’s drug of choice. The top three best selling anti-psychotics together gross more than $25,000 every minute, but no matter how big the psychotropic drug industry gets psychiatrists continue working hard to provide diagnosis to make it even bigger.
Today, anyone may unknowingly be taking a psychiatric drug. Zyban, prescribed as a cure for smoking is actually the anti-depressant Wellbutrin. Cymbalta, a psychiatric drug for depression and anxiety is now being marketed as Yentreve for urinary incontinence. Psychiatric researchers are testing psychotropic drugs on such wildly varying conditions as alcoholism, nausea, herpes, itching, shivering and excessive hair pulling. There is a pill for ever condition and no one is being told how deadly these medications are. With over 80 billion dollars a year in psychiatric drug money at stake, it is impossible to escape the saturation of psychiatric disease mongering in today’s society, but behind the marketing lurks a secret psychiatry’s customers would be shocked to learn. How are these drugs tested and are they safe?
Click here for more: http://www.thehalsreport.com/2011/09/the-truth-about-psychotropic-drugs/
