The "Selling" of Depression

I found this article from Freedom Magazine. I think it has tremendous impact on what you may think about depression. I am only quoting about 75% - I urge you to visit the website for the entire article and many others.

From the viewpoint of the psychiatric industry, you may have a devastating and possibly even deadly disease – even though you detect no signs of illness.

The same may be true for your spouse. Or your child. Or many of your friends. Or for an estimated 55 percent of the United States populace.

The “disease” is depression.

The “depression epidemic” appears to be everywhere – on television and radio, in newspapers and magazines. Ads are ubiquitous; strategically placed articles show a fine-tuned marketing and public relations strategy at work. Treatments – various drugs and therapies including electroshock – seem to abound.

An “Online Depression Screening Test” was discovered, published by the New York University Department of Psychiatry.

Headed “Are You Depressed?”, the test contains 10 benign questions which could be answered affirmatively by virtually anyone. Almost anybody taking the test would find it hard not to be classified as “depressed.”

Drug companies also created a “national depression screening day,” held in October each year, conveniently following the arrival on the market of the latest line of antidepressants. These drugs, pumped as “more effective” and “producing less side effects,” are now among the most lucrative substances on the market, with some individual products grossing billions of dollars per year.

In the United States alone, 43 million prescriptions were written in 1995 for one type of antidepressant alone, known as serotonin reuptake inhibitors. These substances, such as Effexor and Prozac, prevent the brain from reabsorbing a neurotransmitter¹ known as serotonin. No one knows exactly how they do this and, far more importantly, no one knows what the long-term harm of altering the brain’s subtle chemistry in this manner will be.

A Solution

While no one can argue with the concept of better health care, funds to NIMH and organized psychiatry are not part of the solution. Psychiatrists are paid well to handle social problems. The worse the problem is, the more they expect to be remunerated. Why would such a vested interest want to eliminate the problems?

Churches have had far better success in dealing with mental health than have psychiatrists. After all, it was not until religions were cast aside by government-funded psychiatry that violence, drug abuse and moral decay began to ruin society.

Psychiatric treatments focus on man as an animal with no soul, to be manipulated or “modified” by drugs, electric shock and other means. Religions, on the other hand, acknowledge man as a spiritual being. They have traditionally helped to ameliorate problems and suffering and to provide hope.

Religions instill decency and moral standards to make living with our fellows more enjoyable and predictable. They were looked to for safety and support in times of need long before the psychiatrist came along.

One would do better to consult a member of the clergy – or a relative or trusted friend – for advice following the loss of a loved one or at other times of need. As innumerable case histories have attested, entering the door to a psychiatrist’s office is entering “a world where great harm is possible.”

We would also collectively slash funding for psychiatric “research.”

“In my opinion,” stated psychiatrist and author Thomas Szasz, “the ‘mental health’ – in the sense of spiritual well-being – of Americans cannot be improved by slogans, drugs, community mental health centers, or even with billions of dollars expended on a ‘war on mental illness.’ ... The best, indeed, the only, hope for remedying the problem of ‘mental illness’ lies in weakening – not in strengthening – the power of Institutional Psychiatry.”

Yet it is immediately apparent that something is amiss. A few questions reveal that symptoms of depression can include garden-variety grief and anguish, stemming from such unmysterious causes as the loss of a loved one. And since when was every other person you knew “depressed”? A closer look reveals much, much more. And billions at stake.