World Mental Health Day should be dedicated to focusing on mental health. But the supposed custodians of mental health, psychiatrists, are actually the custodians of the exact opposite.
Psychiatrists are selling sickness to the worried well. ‘Disease-Mongering’ is a term defined as “the act of convincing essentially well people that they are sick, or slightly sick people that they are very ill.” Psychiatrists know about it. Drug companies know about it. Advertising executives throughout the world know about it too.
Psychiatric narratives describe the difficulties associated with regular life problems, of which there are many, but it’s the consequent unscientific redefinition of those difficulties as so-called ‘disorders’ that hold psychiatry up to ridicule. It is a practice that has resulted in non-psychiatrists as well as psychiatrists themselves commonly referring to psychiatrists as not being ‘proper’ doctors.
An example of the psychiatric marketing strategy and disease-mongering goes something like this – flood social media platforms with expensive ads about the difficulties some people have with attention levels, how poor concentration and focus is having an impact on their lives, and how being overly active and impulsive are troublesome. Then package these up as diagnostic criteria, give them a psychiatric label called ADHD and sell it.
The results: an analysis of NHS prescribing figures revealed year-on-year percentage increases in the use of drugs prescribed for ADHD. In 2020, there was a 3.7% increase in their use. In 2023 after expensive advertising campaigns, there was a staggering 17.6% increase in the use of ADHD drugs. The ‘illness’ suddenly became more popular.
Psychiatrists make claims that ADHD is more ‘recognised’ but the reality is ADHD is more heavily advertised in glossy magazines and on social media, with a pseudoscientific narrative aimed at convincing readers that unwanted behavioural difficulties are diagnostic criteria that require prescribed psychiatric drugs. It represents good business and good marketing but its bad medicine.
There have been 61 warnings from nine countries, including the UK, warning that ADHD drugs cause harmful side effects which include heart problems, mania or psychosis, cardiovascular disorders, death or sudden death.
The pseudoscience can be blinding unless we take steps to protect ourselves and our loved ones. We must insist on the right to informed consent with full knowledge of the possible risks and benefits of treatment. If this happened, World Mental Health Day would have an optimistic outlook rather than the pessimistic, negative narrative promoted by the psychiatric industry.
