A vital part of every sales campaign is the advertising & PR arm. In this sense Madison Avenue is a key player in this trend toward acceptance of drugs. The "ask your doctor about X" advertising strategy over the past decade can only be described as a smashing success - from the vantage of the pharmaceutical industrial complex, advertisers and pharma shareholders. Not only has this strategy succeeded in convincing consumers that drugs are always the first and best line of defence against ailments that might not even exist, but this strategy has hoodwinked doctors, too, especially GPs, who are responsible for about 80-95% of the dispensing of psychotropic drugs.

Insane (pun intended).

This is pretty disgusting but somehow I think you'd see the trend turning downwards around 2007. I think distrust of big pharma in general and psych meds in particular is increasing. The media from Colbert to Fox news are critical of psych meds and the new DSM is generally realized to be a pathetic, detrimental joke. Veterans are sick of being psych drugged and sent away.

In 1999 I don't think Christopher Lane would have gotten a blog in Psychology Today. And most people seem to believe that so many of the mass killings really were done by folks under the effect of psych drugs, and after every other person in the US being diagnosed with depression, adhd, and or bipolar, I just think people realize it's nonsense and are fed up. At least I hope.

I'm still hopefull that as more people are exposed to these toxins, there will be more outcry about the deadly side effects.

One way to read these excerpts, of course, is that doctors and Big Pharma are conspiring to sell vulnerable people on medications they don't need (or at least, don't need in that particular class or quantity) whose side effects will make them worse instead of better. And the closing memo is about as Orwellian as it gets.

But the glass isn't always half-empty, it's half-full, too. Another way to read the survey results is that there is slightly more public acceptance -- on the margins, perhaps, but statistically significant nonetheless -- of people who have our conditions and who take medication for them. After all, people wouldn't say they are willing to seek treatment for depression, etc. (even if we may think the actual treatments wrongheaded from our experiences) if they didn't believe mental health issues had a legitimacy they were not lent a generation ago.

That's a different question from whether we take the right medications (if we need them at all) and whether the medical establishment is taking best research approach for new ways to fight depression and related conditions.

And that other question deserves some serious reflection as well.

Peace be with you Philip

It doesn't disgust me as much as it scares the hell out of me. It seems less harmful for an airhead consumer to buy a soda because it was advertised using guilt, fear, or sex, than it does for them to demand a medical diagnosis because of it.

love eternal
tad

People ( American, Canadian , or whatever country) can only do what they know. If we have all been taught that mental illness is a brain chemical imbalance, we will all believe in a chemical solution.
Better living through chemistry!
Those that control the information and diagnosis of what mental illness is, control the possible solution.
The solution of chemicals for ("wrong" or unwanted) feelings and behaviours is proven to work well in the short term.

This insanity of chemicals for good mental health will only end when the sick outnumber the healthy, and then the Government will no longer have enough working people actually working.

I think that there is definately a line between demonizing all drugs and making drugs a panacea for, as the quote put it, "day-to-day stresses". I work in mental health treatment and I see a lot of clients for whom psychiatric medication is essential to their functioning. Denying those drugs to the people who most need them would be unethical. Giving drugs to someone who is feeling stressed because of day to day activities or things that are reasonable to be stressed by (death in the family, ect) is also unethical. I think that medication should be a last resort, but I don't think that it should be taken away as an option entirely.

That being said, the advertising that I see for psychotropic drugs is terribly pervasive and damaging. As I suspect you believe, not everyone needs to be medicated.

I don't for a minute believe that this was a true survey. This is something cooked up by Pharma and those who benifit from America being drugged.

If you go to Google and type "SSRIs +murder", it reads, "1-10 of 5,740,000". So there are now close to 6 million articles or stories on SSRIs and murder. Many, many people are aware of this fact now and I even heard a radio show where the host called SSRIs "hallucinogens".

The physicians, of course, are always the last to know and now even some of the physicians are beginning to wise up.

So I don't believe this was a true survey - not for one minute.

Anna wrote "I see a lot of clients for whom psychiatric medication is essential to their functioning. Denying those drugs ..."
I believe many seriously mentally ill can be educated to live with their psychiatric symptoms rather than taking lifelong drugs to surpress higher (frontal lobe) brain function where the symptoms probably originate.

Seriously mentally ill people do not just appear magically one day.
Psychiatry has to look at its methods in how it creates drug dependant individuals, who go on a merry-go-round, in and out of the psychiatric system.

"Denying those drugs..." who would deny the access to a medicine?

Seriously mentally ill has increased to now 1 in 17.1 in 17 LINK

And you say the drugs are working? I don't think so.

NZ and the USA are the only Westen Countries2advertise Drugs-It seems your odd here if ya dont take a drug-also Doctors are not telling ppls that--the sleeping aid-is in fact a anti-psychotic-that the drug their child is given2stop wetting the bed is in fact a anti-depressant. I belive the tread will get higher myself-The voice of drugs is loud-!!.drug companies have so much money-they can advert there way --all the way2the bank.

Pills in the future as the control device in "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut
"Harrison Bergeron" 1995 cable TV movie

a headband device worn by all citizens which modulates intelligence, dialing up or down a person's IQ in order to arrive at a 'perfect' 100.

And pills are in "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury.
this description from wikipedia.
"After meeting Clarisse, Montag returns home to find his wife Mildred asleep with an empty bottle of sleeping pills next to her bed. He calls for medical help; two technicians respond by proceeding to suck out Mildred's blood with a machine and insert new blood into her. The technicians' utter disregard for Mildred forces Montag to question the state of society."

People are more accepting because DTC ads increased on TV and in magazines, increasing exposure to the medications very existence (Abilify, especially in print ads)go to the doctor and get these antipsychotics for insomnia, depression, and a world of hurt waits at the exit door.

I wonder what a survey would come up with asking people how much they support tax increases to help pay for the rise in disability payments via SSI etc due to disablement from using pysch meds, esp antipsychotics that can cause irreversible harm such as diabetes, metobolic disorders, etc.

The end result of such an acceptance is more children being medicated, elderly and the rest of us....willing to pay for this?

Think about it.

http://psychservices.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/60/7/898

Interesting link above, Ramin Mojtabai, M.D., Ph.D the one who authored the paper in Philip's article, is a co-author with Ronald C. Kessler, Ph.D.

http://www.furiousseasons.com/movabletype/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=971

Kessler is the infamous thinker of "50 percent of America is mentally ill"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_C._Kessler

Kessler is the principal investigator of the National Comorbidity Survey (NCS). The NCS was the first nationally representative survey of the prevalence and correlates of psychiatric disorders in the United States. The survey was carried out in 1991 and 1992.

http://www.cumc.columbia.edu/news/press_releases/psychiatrists-psychotherapy.html

Editor’s Note: This study was supported in part by a grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Dr. Mojtabai has received research funding from Bristol-Myers Squibb and AstraZeneca pharmaceutical companies and consultant fees from Bristol-Myers Squibb.

"These trends highlight a gradual but important change in the content of outpatient psychiatric care in the United States and a continued shift toward medicalization of psychiatric practice,” they conclude."

See? it always seems to lead straight to pharma doesn't it.

Seems the author of the article has his fingers in the Pharma till....

Ramin Mojtabai,
Mojtabai has received previous funding from pharmaceutical companies Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. in New York and AstraZeneca PLC in London

http://www.allbusiness.com/health-care/health-care-professionals-physicians-surgeons/12178291-1.html

Presented,but failed to disclose financial relationships during 2009 APA annual meeting.

http://www.psych.org/Departments/EDU/Library/APAOfficialDocumentsandRelated/Conference-Publications/Annual-Meeting-Program-Book/2009.aspx

2007 APA annual meeting disclosure:
Grant/Research support: AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb

Advisory Board: Bristol-Myers Squibb

http://www.psychsearch.net/apa2007.pdf

Dr. Mojtabai has received research funding from Bristol-Myers Squibb and AstraZeneca pharmaceutical companies and consultant fees from Bristol-Myers Squibb.

http://pubs.ama-assn.org/media/2008a/0804.dtl

http://bipolarsoupkitchen-stephany.blogspot.com/2009/08/2007-apa-meeting-pharma-funding.html

2007 APA meeting disclosure list that will blow your mind