From CounterPunch: Last spring, an exhibit promoting mainstream mental health ideologies debuted at the Boston Museum of Science. The exhibit was funded by NAMI and two foundations that advocate for early screening and intervention for childhood “mental illness.”
“Few marketing gambits have been as successful as Pharma’s elevation of everyday symptoms into ‘mental illness.’ It has enabled it to aggregate ‘patient’ groups to petition lawmakers, insurers and Medicaid and Medicare for payment of high-priced psychiatric drugs. It has allowed groups like the Pharma-funded Active Minds and NAMI to infiltrate college campuses and proclaim the ups and downs of growing up and college life ‘mental illness’––growing the market. And now it has allowed it to infiltrate Boston’s Museum of Science.
Last spring an exhibit called Many Faces of Our Mental Health debuted at the museum, taking Pharma’s everyone-is-mentally-ill message to museum goers and the general public. Visitors to the exhibit ‘might gain new insights and better understand the complex nature of mental health,’ said the press release. They might ‘reflect on how mental health affects their own lives or the lives of friends and family.’ Hey, they might have ‘mental illness’ too!”
