Making Mental Illness--Turning Normal People Into Patients

Here's an interesting article from The Guardian, which summarizes recently-published papers by researchers in which they assert that pharma companies actively try to recruit normal people into thinking they have entirely abnormal conditions--restless legs syndrome, anyone?--which are best fixed with a pill. Such attempts by the pharma companies are, of course, legendary in the mental health world.

As fate would have it, this is one of those unusual moments when you don't have to take my word for what the papers say. They are published on the peer-reviewed Public Library of Science website and are free for you to access. Of particular interest to readers of this site will be the article by David Healy, the British doc I referred to last week who is pounding the pulpit about the over-selling of bipolar disorder. His assertions are tough medicine and I will discuss them later, but they are not too dissimilar from one's I made in a recent article of my own. You read. You decide.