The Pharmaceutical Industry and the Construction of Psychiatric Diagnoses

Abstract

Psychiatry is fertile ground for the disease mongering activities of the pharmaceutical industry. Over the last few decades, industry influence has helped to create new psychiatric conditions and transform old ones. The modern concept of depression, for example, was established alongside the marketing of antidepressants in the 1950s and 1960s. More recently the label of depression has been applied to an even wider section of the population, associated with intense marketing of SSRIs. Bipolar disorder has also been transformed from a very rare to a relatively common condition in parallel with the promotion of antipsychotic drugs for its treatment. Schizophrenia has also been expanded into the more vague concept of psychosis, and concepts such as “early intervention” and preventive treatment allow more people to be started on potentially life-long antipsychotic drug treatment. Thus marketing has shaped the very nature of psychiatric concepts and psychiatric knowledge. It also distorts service priorities and focuses attention on mass markets in the general population rather than people with the most severe disorders and the greatest needs.