A Cold Of The Soul

In Japan, like the USA, pharmaceutical companies push over-medication.  See this article, abstract:

In Japan, depression provides the most drastic example of the impact of disease awareness campaigns. Until the late 1990 s, the public's attitude toward depression was generally unfavorable, due to the negative connotations of the Japanese word for clinical depression, 'utsubyou'. After the 1999 introduction of the first selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor, pharmaceutical companies initiated educational campaigns. In order to aid the drug's acceptance, they coined the catchphrase 'kokoro no kaze', which literally means 'a cold of the soul'. Thanks to these marketing practices, antidepressant sales have increased six fold, from ¥ 14.5 billion in 1998 to ¥ 87 billion in 2006. However, the catchphrase 'kokoro no kaze' masked a critical difference between a cold and depression. It falsified the nature of treatment for depression by concealing the putative duration of medication. Owing to this distortion of information, pharmaceutical companies were assured a steady stream of profits. Now, the pharmaceutical industry is shifting its focus from depression to bipolar disorder. Japanese psychiatrists can learn a great deal from their experience with the aggressive marketing of antidepressants. In the case of depression, over-medication arguably did more harm than good. The same risk exists with other conditions, including bipolar disorder.

Sound familiar?  Now, if medication is necessary, take it.  I do.  But take medication that is necessary, as determined by your physician, your own research, and the cooperation between yourself and your health care team. Talk to your physician, and do research.  Medication solely to boost pharmaceutical profits is not the way to go.  Good medications are saviors, antibiotics have saved millions of lives, and we should not reject biomedical advances.  But the Japanese case outlined here describe a case where unnecessary overmedication has taken place.  One must understand the difference.

Big Pharma Disease Mongering?

Can’t say I’m surprised by this.  Related to that, if you work in an academic setting, you'll find plenty of students who suddenly are able to find a health care professional to diagnose them with a "learning disability" requiring "accommodation" (and medication - amphetamine stimulants - in many cases) once they fail some classes.  Interestingly, the same students who were straight-A students as college undergraduates mysteriously develop a "learning disability" in their early-mid 20s (or later) once they have problems with difficult courses in some sort of post-graduate education.

The pharmaceutical industry’s image has been significantly damaged in recent years as the public discovered the role its aggressive marketing played in fueling the opioid epidemic. But the American people are still largely in the dark about what may be pharma’s most effective tactic for pushing drugs — marketing diseases.

There’s a substantial body of medical literature dating back to the early ’90s about the practice known as “disease mongering.” Pharmaceutical companies regularly pathologize everyday experiences, convince doctors that they are serious problems, tell a hypochondriacal public it needs help and offers the cure: a new drug. Against the onslaught of billions of dollars in marketing campaigns each year, however, researchers’ warnings about these tactics have gone largely unheeded…

 …“Marketing for a drug can start seven to 10 years before they go on the market. Because it’s illegal to promote a drug before it goes on the market, what they’re promoting is the disease. That’s not illegal to do because there’s no regulation on creating diseases,” Fugh-Berman told Yahoo News.

Lisa Schwartz and Steven Woloshin, co-directors of the Center for Medicine and Media at Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, said disease-awareness campaigns may seem caring or educational but are often just marketing in disguise. The campaigns often follow three basic steps: lower the bar for diagnosis, raise the stakes so people want to get tested and spin the evidence about a drug’s benefits and risks. These steps were seen in campaigns on testosterone deficiency, bipolar disorder and restless leg syndrome…

…Fugh-Berman recalled taking an online test with her coworkers at PharmedOut, a group she directs at Georgetown that exposes pharmaceutical marketing and promotes evidence-based prescribing. The test on pseudobulbar affect (PBA), which manifests when specific brain damage leads to laughing or crying that is inappropriate and unconnected to a person’s emotions, suggested that normal human expressions could be signs of PBA with questions like “Do you ever find things funny that other people don’t find funny?” and “Do you cry easily?”

“Almost every woman failed. Only one woman passed. Most of the men failed, but more of them passed. I would say that anyone who passed the test I was actually worried about,” Fugh-Berman said…

… “I feel that there are people involved in creating new diseases and promoting drugs that aren’t really needed who are pretty amoral. Their measurement of success for themselves is strictly sales,” Pearson said. “There are good-spirited and good-hearted people in companies who are proud of developing something that provides help to some people — and then their marketing department gets ahold of it and turns it into something else.”

Psychotropic drugs

What do you think is more harmful to humanity: tobacco use or prescribed psychotropic drugs? After watching this documentary, I would say that both tobacco and psychotropic drugs might cause equal harm.

The difference is that no one prescribes you cigarettes, it is your own decision to use or not use tobacco.

However, the use of psychotropic drugs involves a criminal offense. It is an offense perpetrated by the pharmaceutical companies producing the drugs, the FDA approving the drugs, and the "doctors" who prescribe the drugs. You are simply the victim. Do not be one. Watch the documentary.

The drugging of our children is also discussed, and I have written about it earlier. Do not subject your kids to this injustice. Watch the documentary.