PSYCHIATRY: THE MARKETING OF LIFE AS MENTAL ILLNESS (Copy)
Psychiatric prescriptions in the UK have skyrocketed in the last few years. In England alone, the latest NHS figures show at least 9.1 million people were prescribed antidepressants in 2025/26. In the same time period, 63,600 children under 18 years of age were prescribed antidepressants and 158,000 were prescribed ADHD medication. Prescriptions for adults and children with ADHD have risen substantially in the last 5 years, as have other psychiatric drug prescriptions like hypnotics, anxiolytics and psychoses. What’s going on? Is mental illness catching or are we having the wool pulled over our eyes? To find out more, please read on …
The Labelling of Life as Mental Illness
The full gamut of emotions makes up the rich tapestry of life. These encompass enthusiasm, serenity, interest, boredom, antagonism, anger, grief and fear. No one sails through life at the top of the emotional tone scale without experiencing emotional lows such as those occasioned by the death of a loved one or pet. That is life and traditionally people helped each other through the pain of grieving by communication. But in latter years, each emotional challenge, each negative (and sometimes positive) emotion experienced along the way has been medicalised as a “mental disorder” with psychiatry waiting in the wings to hand out a drug prescription. People do have serious problems in life but psychiatry has reduced them all down to a “chemical imbalance” in the brain.
History of Psychiatric Labelling (DSM)
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is the Bible psychiatrists and psychologist refer to when diagnosing a “mental disorder.” The work of German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926), known as the “father of psychiatric classification,” helped establish the foundations of modern psychiatric labelling and diagnosis. Back in the 1890s he made up a list of three conditions he thought of as diseases of the brain. These were dementia praecox (schizophrenia), manic-depression and paranoia psychosis. Kraepelin’s system caught on because no one had had an agreed way to describe patients until then.
The first DSM was published in 1952 and had expanded from the last century to include 130 pages of 112 conditions now classified as “mental disorders.” These included such weight gain, weight loss, poor efficiency and homosexuality. By defining life events as “abnormal” psychiatry could obtain more money.
DSM 11, published in 1968, was heavily influenced by Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud and contained 182 diagnoses, expanded the classification of childhood and adolescent disorders and retained a category of “sexual deviations” including homosexuality.
DSM 111, published in 1980, expanded the list of “disorders” to 259 with the goal of raising the rather low profile of psychiatry in medicine. To promote the idea that psychiatry was based on science, it resurrected the “chemical imbalance” of the brain theory invented by Joseph Schildkraut in 1965. The idea was that because psychiatric drugs alter the level of some brain chemicals, mental illness must be caused by too much or too little of them. Isn’t that a little backwards? It’s like saying that because morphine kills pain, that pain must then be a deficiency of morphine? However, the marketing strategy worked and the chemical imbalance theory of the 1960s was used to justify the prescription of millions of antidepressant drugs. This theory has
now been shown to be incorrect, not based on any science and thoroughly discredited. It has nevertheless not stopped the prescriptions.
DSM 1V was published in 1994 and the number of “disorders” had risen to 365. It included such “mental” conditions as stuttering, Mathematics Disorder, ADHD, Disorder of Written Expression, Encopresis (having a poo in an awkward place beyond the expected developmental age), and new disorders of infancy.
DSM V was published in 2013 and the number of “disorders” had now risen to 541 diagnostic categories. There was no universally agreed total. This manual includes disorders relating to hoarding possessions, skin picking, spending too much time on the internet and social media, grieving for a loved one for over 12 months, preoccupation with orderliness and being a perfectionist, significant weight loss or gain, fear of speaking in public, feeling socially awkward, fear of being judged or humiliated, fear of losing someone, being prone to brief bursts of anger, sleep apnoea (hey, isn’t that an actual physical condition with real causes?) and experiencing neurological symptoms that doctors fail to diagnose (how about Medical Incompetence Disorder? Perhaps that could be included in DSM V1 which is already being prepared for publication?). There is even a Non-Compliance Disorder. In other words, if you refuse treatment, you are mentally ill!
How are psychiatric disorders in DSM discovered?
Psychiatry is the only branch of the medical profession which does not rely on lab tests, imaging or any other scientific measurement for its diagnoses. That is because there is not a single biochemical lab test, biomarker, imaging device in existence that can prove the validity of these diagnoses. Instead, all the classifications of conditions marketed as “mental disorders” in the DSM volumes were voted into existence by a show of hands in various committees by psychiatrists themselves. Some, like homosexuality as a mental disorder, have been voted off the list. In other words, DSM is a book of problems reinterpreted as mental disorders and influenced by opinion, bias and politics.
The lack of science behind DSM and psychiatric diagnoses has been described as a "house of cards”, flimsy and easily collapsible under the scrutiny of critical scientific thinking.
What happens after “diagnosis”?
The DSM manuals are there to justify drug treatment. A recent market estimate puts global revenue from psychiatric drugs at approximately 39 billion US dollars a year. The NHS’s cost for antidepressants was approximately £230 million in 2023.
Antidepressants are very potent and toxic and can shut down a person’s emotions so they no longer feel grief or happiness, just dehumanising numbness. They can seriously inhibit motivation to do anything as well as sexual performance and can cause diabetes, metabolic syndrome, heart, lung, kidney and digestive problems as well as massive weight gain. It can take years to wean off psychiatric drugs and years for side effects to wane even if you are no longer taking the drugs.
When people are no longer able to detoxify these drugs through the liver, their organs can begin to shut down. The worst listed side effects of these drugs is suicide and homicide.
If patients were informed about these side effects and the flimsy nature of psychiatric diagnosis, would they sign up to take the drugs?
For more information on psychiatric drug side effects, please see the blog Medical Spellbinding - A Most Damaging Side Effect of Psychiatric Drugs on the Good Health Clinic, Plymouth website and the CCHR (Citizens Commission On Human Rights website).
Psychiatry Targeting Children
Children are a huge target for the psychiatric market. ADHD has been successfully promoted to school children. In the UK around 741,000 children are estimated to have ADHD. Approximately 158,400 children aged 17 and under are estimated to be taking ADHD medication like Ritalin (methylphenidate), a central nervous system stimulant and a Schedule 2 controlled drug, reflecting its potential for misuse and dependence. Ritalin is marketed to parents to as a drug to calm down their child. However, Ritalin is a form of speed, an amphetamine, chemically similar to cocaine and what is actually happening is that a child is being overdosed on speed. This increases the heart rate and the blood pressure. Put a child on Ritalin on the football pitch on a hot day and his risk of having a cardiac event goes way up.
Shockingly, there is now a DC: 0-3 (Diagnostic Classification) manual aimed at diagnosing and medicating babies and toddlers despite the fact that DSM states it cannot distinguish between childhood mental illness and normal childhood behaviour. Further evidence of insanity in a sick society? How about adding Psychiatric Greed Disorder and Harmful Drugging Of Children Disorder to the list?
Children have no control over whether they are drugged or not. They are helpless victims and the ones who are supposed to protect them, their parents, are not being armed with all the facts. Sadly, too many parents have learned the hard way when their child has taken his or her own life while taking psychiatric drugs.
What you can do
If your child has received a psychiatric “diagnosis” based on a questionnaire without lab tests or imaging, and somebody wants to prescribe a psychiatric drug based on lack of medical evidence, I suggest doing the following:
1)Ask for a second opinion so that actual lab tests can be run to explore underlying physical conditions. If your GP can’t do this, you may need to go privately to someone who can.
2)Invoke Informed Consent which means that the prescribing physician has to go through the side effects of the medication with you and as well as alternative treatments to drugs.
If you would like help with any of the above, please get in touch with the Good Health Clinic on goodhealthclinic@outlook.com to request a free 30 minute Enquiry Call or book an appointment. Please note that an Enquiry call is not a consultation but an exploratory call to see if this is a clinical approach you wish to pursue.To your very good health,
Suzanne Jeffery (Nutritional Medicine Consultant)
M.A.(Oxon), BSc.(NMed), PGCE, GNC, BSEM, MNNA, CNHC
The Good Health Clinic at The Business Centre, 2, Cattedown Road, Plymouth PL4 0EG
Tel no: 07836 552936/ Answer phone: 01752 774755
Disclaimer:
All advice given out by Suzanne Jeffery and the Good Health Clinic is for general guidance and informational purposes only. All advice relating to other health professionals’ advice is for general guidance and information purposes only. Readers are encouraged to confirm the information provided with other sources. Patients and consumers should review the information carefully with their professional health care provider. The information is not intended to replace medical advice offered by other practitioners and physicians. Suzanne Jeffery and the Good Health Clinic will not be liable for any direct, indirect, consequential, special, exemplary or other damages arising therefrom.