Stop the madness (or at least the sale of it)

Drug companies in the U.S. seem to be hearing Jack Nicholson's command from As Good as it Gets : Go sell crazy someplace else, we're all stocked up here!

Ethan Watters published an article for the New York Times on the Americanization of Mental Illness (you will find a link to it to the right). Not only is America claiming 20-25% of its residents present with a mental illnesses (a term I inherently hate, for the record) of some form, but it is constantly coming up with new disorders with which to infect its countrymen. The DSM-III, which came out in 1980 had over 100 new mental disorders (some of which are still being contested), and now the DSM-IV (to come out in 2012) is said to have more new disorders, some of which include "compulsive shopping." No, apparently it's not just a movie according to our highly trained mental health professionals (see the article in Slate posted to the right).

Apparently diseasing 1/4 of Americans with movie-inspired illnesses is not enough for the drug companies. They're going on holiday to recruit new cultures for participation in their disease mongering. Mental illness used to have strong roots in culture, including “symptom repertoires” and treatment methods. The exportation of mental illness is being done on a grand scale and selectively so, depending on which countries may be more "vulnerable" to which disorders (for example, Japan is lapping up depression, according to Mr. Watters).

The point is that our method of diagnosing mental disorders and treating them are both strongly contested by highly knowledgeable people in the industry as being horrifically "misguided." So not only is our way not the best (to put it kindly), it is certainly not the best for other cultures.