Since the 1990s, we’ve been hearing about the amazing progress in mental healthcare: We learned that mental illnesses like depression are serious but treatable diseases. And thanks to education and awareness-raising efforts, more people are getting help with their suffering. But there’s a paradox here: The U.S. led the way with this and embraced it the most. Yet we’ve had a rising suicide rate since 20001 , despite it falling nearly everywhere else2,3,4,5.
This paradox can’t be blamed on social media, Covid, or financial issues, since these occurred everywhere, not just here. And our rise in suicides can’t be due to guns, since they’ve long been prevalent here. Could the above progress itself be causing our rising suicides? Here are three possible ways:
1) It’s normal to feel emotional pain in response to life events. Focusing solely on our pain has been shown to worsen our perceived suffering6. Raising awareness about depression, screening for it, and teaching that it’s common but underdiagnosed, at first glance seem like good things. But read between the lines—they’re actually ways of subtly prodding us to focus in on our pain and to conclude that we’re depressed. So these efforts probably increased distress in America. It’s the power of negative thinking.
2) Telling us that depression is a serious disease caused by abnormal brain chemistry, likely further increased suffering here, as follows:
This seems like an effort to enlighten us about a major scientific breakthrough. But think again: It’s actually a way to subliminally plant this depressing idea into our heads: “If you feel sad, it’s not because you have a temporary problem that you can resolve. It’s because you have a disease that will cause you to suffer endlessly”. This probably caused many people to feel hopeless, helpless, and defective. And it deterred them from working on their underlying issues, which thus festered and worsened, adding to their despair.
If antidepressants truly fixed underlying chemical imbalances, then these downsides wouldn’t matter. But despite 60 years of intensive searching, no chemical imbalance was ever found. We were led to believe in a myth. Since there’s no chemical imbalance to fix, it’s no surprise that antidepressants also turned out to be fakes: In industry-funded trials, they only performed slightly better (a statistically insignificant amount) than placebos7. It’s another myth that was repeatedly conditioned into us. So these downsides do matter.
3) America has focused its mental illness awareness, education, and screening campaigns on children. This probably especially increased suffering here, as follows:
Kids are impressionable, and thus easily molded. They’re trusting, and thus easily deceived. And they can’t think critically yet. So when they’re taught that sadness is a chronic disease, they’ll blindly accept this pessimistic idea to be true.
Their identities haven’t formed yet. They haven’t yet had a chance to achieve any successes. So any self-esteem they have is fragile, and vulnerable to being eroded by these campaigns. Once a hopeless, helpless identity has been instilled into their psyche, they’ll be less likely to try. Adolescents often feel insecure already. So it’s particularly easy to get them to adopt an inferior self-image.
Labeling kids with “brain diseases” sets them up for failure: Teachers think they’re less capable of learning. So their educations, and chances for good careers, will suffer. They’re taught to use chemicals to deal with their issues. So they’ll be less likely to learn responsible coping tools, and more likely to become drug addicts as adults.8 Amphetamines like Adderall are addictive. So teenagers who take them are already addicts.
I’ll now give examples of alternative ways of viewing and dealing with life’s challenges, and contrast them with our current medicalized approach:
Parents of rambunctious little boys with endless energy used to think “I can’t wait to see what he accomplishes as he matures and learns to channel all that exuberance into something productive”. But now they often think “He’ll struggle all his life due to his faulty brain hardwiring. We must lower our expectations and demands, since he’s permanently disabled by his ADHD.”
People who became depressed used to reason “I feel down. But I’ve got to push through it and get back on my feet. One day I’ll move on. Time heals all wounds. I may even learn something from all this.” But now they often think “I’m only sad because I have depression. I’ll always suffer horribly due to my bad brain chemistry; I would rather have had cancer than this”.
Parents of volatile teenagers used to say “This is hard, but I’ll be patient, since I know it’s a phase they must go through in order to develop into competent, independent adults”. But now they often say “Since they have bipolar disorder, they’ll never be able to manage their emotions or achieve any stability. Its debilitating symptoms will make their lives a constant battle.”
Clearly our older approach was positive and hopeful, while our current one is demoralizing and life-ruining. Yet it’s constantly promoted here, and only here. Why?
The U.S. is the only developed nation with for-profit healthcare. So it’s only here that recruiting more patients will generate more income. Suffering is the main reason people seek healthcare. Causing more suffering will thus generate more income here. This explains why we alone are prodded to dwell on our pain, told that we’re fated to a life of misery, and started down that path early in life. Only our profit-driven system incentivizes such predatory behavior.
What strategies does Big Pharma use to achieve these goals?
- It invests heavily in marketing and advertising. These powerful tools enable it to covertly manipulate the way we think and feel. We’re like putty in Big Pharma’s hands, especially if this starts when we’re kids. The cleverest example is the iconic 2001 Zoloft commercial: It showed a cute, always-sad cartoon blob, and images of chemicals moving from one nerve to another, as a narrator proclaims: “Depression is a serious medical condition caused by a chemical imbalance”. This advertising slogan has been ingrained in our culture ever since.
- Big Pharma lobbies our politicians (more than any other industry), so that our government will help it. One way it helps is by passing laws like the 1997 Federal Drug Administration Modernization Act. It allowed direct-to-consumer advertising here9. It’s illegal everywhere else (except New Zealand), out of concern that such ads could mislead people and cause them to be harmed. So only our kids were indoctrinated by that Zoloft ad. The U.S. Preventive Services Taskforce also helped Big Pharma, by telling doctors to screen for depression in 200910. This isn’t recommended in Europe, due to concern for its harms.11
- It pays our leading, standard-setting doctors millions to promote Big Pharma’s “newly discovered diseases” to other doctors12. Big Pharma also funds our medical schools13, controls our medical conventions and journals, and wines and dines our doctors, in order to further pull their strings.
- It funds research that’s thus incentivized to produce results that support Big Pharma’s misinformation. That’s easy to do in the mental health field, since it’s nearly all subjective. The only objectively quantifiable (hard) outcome data is the suicide rate!
- It funds many trusted authorities (public health agencies like the CDC14, patient advocacy groups like NAMI15, and health information websites like WebMD16). This adds many well-respected puppets to Big Pharma’s myth-spreading team. It funds our public schools, so that teachers will be disease spotters17. Our media is in its pocket, due to the billions it spends on ads yearly. It even funds the FDA18, the agency that is supposed to regulate it.
Big Pharma leaves no stone unturned in its efforts to corrupt every aspect of our society. And it’s all unseen by unsuspecting Americans. That’s why its propaganda campaigns are so effective.
Its campaigns often target mental illnesses, since they’re subjective; This makes it easy for Big Pharma to persuade us to think “Hmm… that sounds like me. My body’s fine, but I guess my mind isn’t”. It would be harder for it to convince us that we had an objectively verifiable disease, like cancer. But don’t underestimate Big Pharma. It just may pull this off someday!
Big Pharma’s mental illness propaganda has often targeted kids, for four reasons: They’re easy prey, as discussed earlier. Kids used to rarely become its customers due to their excellent health; successfully exploiting this huge, untapped market thus created a gold-mine. Children’s entire lives lay ahead to profit off of. And since most mothers had become very busy due to working full-time, the timing was perfect. Preying upon kids gives Big Pharma the best return on its investment, both short and long-term.
Our healthcare providers are paid on a fee-per-service basis, so they benefit by going along with the propaganda: When Big Pharma’s depression campaigns lured tons of Americans to psychiatrists’ offices, they gladly stopped being therapists to become 10-minute assembly-line medication managers. Primary care doctors also profited by cramming in many brief, placebo-dispensing visits. When ADHD campaigns drove hordes of American parents to see pediatricians, they eagerly filled their schedules with endless quick, monthly drug-renewals
But socialized medicine doctors earn a fixed salary, no matter how many people they see in a day. This discourages them from expanding their client base; it would only force them to work harder for the same pay. So whereas for-profit healthcare incentivizes increasing suffering, socialized medicine incentivizes reducing it.
Big Pharma doesn’t spend much on propaganda in socialized medicine countries, anyway. That’s because there’s less incentive: it’s paid only a fourth as much for its brand name pills when sold there19 due to strict price regulations20.And giving psych meds to kids is very restricted there21: European kids take them one third as often as here; amphetamines almost never(they’re mostly banned22).The nerve of Europeans to look out for their kids’ welfare!
In conclusion, our profit-driven healthcare system improved its bottom line by increasing suffering, especially among children. This explains why the U.S. has so many youth crises: 1. Rising suicides, which rose the most for youths23, 2. School shootings, which are often murder/suicides, and 3. Overdoses, which rose the most for youths24. Opioid pill mills also contributed to these, but they’re another example of our healthcare system’s profiting by causing suffering.
References
- U.S. Suicide Rate 2000-2024, macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries
- European Union Suicide Rate 2000-2024, macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries
- East Asia & Pacific Suicide Rate 2000-2024, macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries
- India Suicide Rate 2000-2024, macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries
- Russia Suicide Rate 2000-2024, macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries
- “Distraction from pain: The role of selective attention and pain catastrophizing” Rischer, K, Gonzalez-Roldan, A, et al, Eur J Pain, 2020 Aug 13;24(10)1880-1891.
- Kirsch, I “The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth”, Basic Books, New York, 2010.
- McCabe, S, Veliz, P, et al “Adolescents’ Prescription Stimulant Use and Adult Functional Outcomes: A National Prospective Study” J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry, 2016 Dec 25,56(3)226-233.
- Govinfo.gov: Food And Drug Administration Modernization Act Of 1997, Public Law 105-115-Nov. 21, 1997, 105th Congress.
- USPreventiveservicestaskforce.org: “Depression in Adults: Screening: Final Recommendation Statement” December 15, 2009, U.S. Preventive Services Taskforce.
- View-health-screening-recommendations.service.gov.uk: “Adult Screening Programme: Depression” July 2020, UK National Screening Committee.
- Whitaker, R “Anatomy of an Industry: Commerce, Payments to Psychiatrists and Betrayal of the Public Good” Madinamerica.com, Sep 18, 2021.
- Tanne, J “Financial ties common between US medical schools and drug companies” BMJ 2007, Oct 20;335(7624):793.
- Silverman, E “What money? The CDC is urged to acknowledge industry funding” Statnews.com Pharmalot, Nov 5, 2019.
- Harris, G “Drug Makers Are Advocacy Groups’ Biggest Donors”, The New York Times, Oct 21, 2009.
- Rallis, D “Has WebMD become Synonymous with Big Pharma?” Business Insider, GMI Ratings, Oct 31, 2012.
- Phillips, C “Medicine Goes to School: Teachers as Sickness Brokers for ADHD” PLoS Med, 2006 Apr 11;3(4)e182.
- Jewett, C “F.D.A.’s Drug Industry Fees Fuel Concern Over Influence” The New York Times, Sep 15, 2022.
- Mulcahy, A, Whaley, C “International Prescription Drug Price Comparisons: Current Empirical Estimates and Comparisons with Previous Studies” Rand.org, Rand Corporation, Jan 28, 2021.
- Golec, J, Vernon, J “European Pharmaceutical Price Regulation, Firm Profitability, and R & D Spending” Working Paper 12676, National Bureau of Economic Research, Nov 2006.
- Eaton, L “Regulator restricts use of SSRIs in children” BMJ, 2005 Apr 30;330(7498)984.
- Zito, J, Safer, D, et al “A three-country comparison of psychotropic medication preval-ence in youth” Child Adolesc Psychiatry Ment Health.2008 Sep 25;2;26.
- Curtin, S, Garnett, M “Suicide and Homicide Death Rates Among Youth and Young Adults Aged 10-24: United States, 2001-2021” NCHS Data Brief No. 471, June 2023, CDC National Center for Health Statistics.
- Fujita-Imazu, S, Xie, J, et al “Evolving trends in drug overdose mortality in the USA from 2000 to 2020: an age-period-cohort analysis” eClinicalMedicine 2023 Jul 6;61:102079.
Thanks for this. I as a parent and a professional saw it all play out in real time. One thing not mentioned here and in many places is that during these times because of the increase number of pills prescribed fir both adults and children medicine cabinets became a source for use as in the old and probably still possible liquor cabinets.
One would hear of pill parties. So when dx became a thing one as a parent hoped that a professional psychiatrist could be a gateway keeper kind of like in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Only those who knew an exact answer could go through. It seemed as if this never really happened and the professionals to sometimes the detriment of their young patients were bamboozled as well and no one ever took the time to, energy or money ey to map any of this public health information out. And this was more higher socio economic areas this in a different way and method had been happening for decades in other areas the a wide variety of nefarious reasons.
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Love the title: “For-Profit Healthcare Is a Predator; Its Main Prey Is Our Young”, but how few of us live the insights we expose. In any case, why is it just for-profit HEALTHCARE that is predatory? Isn’t the profit motive itself predatory, and hasn’t the 20th and 21st centuries proven so far beyond doubt the inevitable telos of a wholly selfish, self-interested society? This disease of self-interest has infected not just every single human being even those with already enormous wealth, power and social status, but this ideological perversion of selfishness has been adopted by every institution, corporation and other collective entity including nation, as each block fights every other block in order to advance it’s separative interests. No wonder humanity and the global social process is tearing itself apart, and we are that. The fractures and fissures within this society are fractures and fissures within our own hearts and in our own minds, throughout our lives, scarring all of our relationships. Because even in our separative delusions, we are still one total humanity, one total species process, and this humanity, this process is part of the total process of nature, all these things that the social process characterised by exploitation, domination and usurpation have destroyed. So it is not just for-profit healthcare that is preying on our children. It is all the deranged and craven vampires that dominate this vampire society and want to turn all your children into one of themselves. And undeniably, it is working. Few of them will escape vampire or victim status. Psychiatrist is just one kind of vampire, your traumatised and confused child just one kind of victim. On the farm yards and in the slaughter houses that feed you’re children, it’s Auschwitz every day, but few people seem to care about that fact. It’s pure evil, the evil of the profit motive.
Profit is evil. The profit motive is proof of trauma. What child in an atmosphere of love would develop a hunger for profit, for gain? A child that has already had their perfect childhood health, brightness, wholeness and holiness shattered by the unconscious and confused actions of these other damaged children we call ‘adults’ and their dissolute adult society dominated by absurdities and vampires from bottom right up to the very top, as Biden and Donald Trump today show.
Profit and trade is not what is natural at all, even if your socially conditioned brain can’t think it’s way out of it. If I give you bread and you give me milk that is sharing with my neighbour, until I am estranged and alienated from them in my interests. When my neighbour is my sister or brother then it is the joy of sharing, of enriching each others and therefore our own lives, with each others lives and the activities of that life. Activities of life which serve only my interests, hopes, dreams, ambitions, desires and other non-actuals is a lonely investment of spiritual energy in our own self-isolating action and consequent self-estrangement. And then we seek the help of a psychiatrist for our loneliness, so unaware and unconscious of the total process within which we are trapped and imprisoned.
Somehow all of culuture, even the most reified and ossified, manages to express deep truths of spirit. The matrix is quite a good model of reality because we are in a psuedo-bright, psuedo-colourful psuedo-clean psuedo-rational demonic psuedo-reality without which we would see that we are essentially like those unconscious organisms slumbering in an extractive machine. This is a good model of reality, and that unconscious body in the machine is like The Living Dead, and the extractors of the life-energy, labours and dreams are like the Vampires. They do pillage us in our dreams and in our sleep like Freddie Kruger. Their mind of deviousness and exploitation designs your mind of delusion and confusion. It’s functional delusion and confusion, “and if you tolerate this, then you’re children will be next” says the Manic Street Preacher(s).
Anyway, what were you saying again? For-profit healthcare is a predator and it’s main prey is our young. Yet even good people like teachers and parents have become unconscious slayers and predators of our youth, both of whom are the ones pushing our children to the psychiatrist. The police and politicians and business leaders are even worse predators. Wake up fellow factory farm animal and recognize what I’m saying and perhaps we can do something about this together. We could mount a rebellion or something, like the French resistance or like in Animal Farm. Animal farm too is about today in so many ways. The shit rises to the top as do the most vicious, ruthless animals who would even butcher themselves for eternity just for the chance to butcher you and your children out of the blind and bottomless spiritual disease called self-interest. “Would the last one to leave please turn out the lights” say the animal spirits. But without fuel a rocket is not even a rocket.
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profit is ‘evil’ and when the whole society runs on that principle, healthcare cannot be isolated from that general rule. I disagree with the article’s premise that there is a fundamental difference between purely private healthcare established in the usa and so called ‘public’ healthcare which is prevalent in the rest of the world. canada has universal healthcare but the situation there is basically the same. it doesn’t make much difference if the government manages the healthcare sector when the government itself is an extension of capital. capital can and will transform every institution for its own benefit.
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Amen Ahmet. Your analysis I find is spot on, thank you.
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I’m glad I read this article. It has many insightful points. I have met many parents or other relatives who don’t want to deal with their children’s problems because they don’t want to see themselves and how they are hurting their children.
I used to see a therapist who was a child therapist for 11 years and finally gave up and only did therapy for adults afterwards because she told me that it was very rare for a parent to want to work on changing themselves and helping their kids. They just wanted a quick fix. I also know that there are teachers who are overwhelmed and just want kids sedated and to behave so what better way then medications.
However, it makes sense to me that there are parents or other family members who aren’t hurting their children but are going to psychiatrists, pediatricians or other professionals simply because they have been brainwashed into thinking that whatever emotional turmoil or struggles their children have is simply due to a chemical imbalance in their brain that needs to be fixed. The same brainwashing is going on for some teachers as well. I’m glad I grew up in the 70s before all of this became so popular and common.
We are all misled into believing that there is a pill or a few pills to cure practically all of our “ailments”, which simply isn’t true.
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Thank you for your stinging critique of the magnitude of the corruption, and the impropriety of psych drugging children, Lawrence.
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I think for profit psychiatry may contribute to homelessness. I haven’t seen any research on this topic but personal experience has shown that once the insurance runs out or the family stops paying or they ask too many questions the helping professionals will find a way to discredit and discard the money maker…
And move on to the next one…
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One might try and argue that the one solitary virtue of the for-profit healthcare system is that if you happened to be poor like me, you can always flash some flesh in the hope of avoiding the bill, but needless to say it’s a double edged sward. It’s something my American friend used to do, but it had unintended consequences, because when she told her elderly grandmother (who was also poor) about her money saving exercise, her grandmother was so inspired she tried the same trick on her psychiatrist. Unfortunately he was not amused, and grandma ended up being shipped off to the local mental hospital against her will. So flashing your bits for a free lunch is not quite socialist medicine in America. It’s capitalism. Having said that, we have free healthcare in the UK yet I still like to try the flashing strategy myself, don’t ask me why. It does always result in either being banged up or the another non-clinical, extracurricular kind of banging which I won’t mention. What a marvellous national health service we have.
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The amazing mental healthcare they brag about, that began in the 1990s was actually the beginning of the Veteran Suicide and Mass Sh**ting Crisis that began when VA Mental Health approved Paxil and Zoloft for the FDA as treatment for PTSD and Depression as a result of H.R. 841 “Veterans PTSD Treatment and Psychological Readjustment Act of 1991”
Ref: 110th Congressional Hearing “The Truth About Veterans’ Suicides” (page 110)
111th Congressional Hearing “Exploring the Relationship Between Medication and Veteran Suicide” (pages 63 and 96)
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I’ve been saying this for YEARS and no one believed me! Corrupt industry, sick country Former healthcare worker.
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Response to “No-one”
Profit is NOT evil, only people are evil.
Profit provides the incentive, for example, to develop vaccines, improve early diagnostic tools and finding cures for diseases to name a few.
The profit motive has saved countless lives, reduced suffering, and greatly improved human flourishing.
On the other hand, socialism stifles any and all advancement, is that what your utopia looks like?
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Socialism and capitalism are both dystopias because they imply domination and enslavement by social history which ruins the brain as all our socially conditioned utterances prove. Admittedly Finland and Sweden which are consistently ranked happiest nation on Earth by the World Happiness Index, have a more grey and pleasant dystopia then we know, but it is decaying and ossifying and dying like the rest of the human created world and I say Good Riddance, and hopefully the whole of life on Earth besides us confused and destructive people feels the same. Because it’s unavoidable and it is a miracle how people can be so blinded by their conditioning and hopes and fears and delusions to not see that. When you justify profit you justify the ruination of the Earth and all our children’s futures, which was predicted to happen by early social critics of capitalism (not including the philosophers including Marx who were theorists rather then truth-oriented critics) and by the many commentators and philosophers examining the birth, health and subsequent collapse of previous civilizations inn human history – all these things say it’s gonna happen, reality shows it is happening, and luckily the collapse of the global human social process will also mean the collapse of the structures of the socially conditioned mind which utterly depends on it for it’s survival. And this will be great fun to so called ‘psychotics’, recovered or still suffering, because there will be no change for them but all those who counted themselves previously as sane – the most socially conditioned – will suddenly discover what a ‘psychosis’ really is because it is this very energetic infarction of the ego brought about by deeply traumatizing social experience. I always said when I was first undergoing the phenomena that I somehow feel that I’m going through something that the whole of civilization will soon be going through, and in understanding it now I will not struggle to understand it then, and perhaps even may grasp the solution, but the solution is not to be found outside of this very collapse of the false and tyrannical system of domination you cling to as if you had Stockholme’s syndome. It will be comparatively fun for me to see what happens to people psychologically when there whole piggy playground is destroyed and all their compatriots are babbling demonically possessed psychopaths killing everything with a pulse just in case they have something worse steeling, because it’ll be like the TV movies that entertain you, because once you’ve totally lost reality, as almost all your compatriots have, your lives do end up as pointless and dispensable as cartoon characters and your self-destruction would then be you unwittingly putting yourself out of your own misery. I am grieving it presently though, every day.
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Thanks for another great article Dr. Kelmenson. It’s a calamity what has gone on under the guise of mental health ‘care’ and how so many children and other people have had their life sabotaged for greed and Pharma profits. In Canada under our socialized system doctors get paid per visit so they can increase their salary by cramming in more short visits per day. In general our system is a disaster though. My brother went to a psychiatrist for ‘help’ with temp sadness post divorce and not being able to see his young sons as often. The adverse effects of the drugs prescribed (during his 15 minute med visit each month) caused his physical health to decline. It turned out (via his autopsy) one AD drug was accumulating in his liver. No blood work had ever been done and liver enzymes were never checked etc. One day he died in bed from liver toxicity at age 40. Many people in Canada are dying on wait lists for general health care. Or they are offered MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) and can have it approved fairly soon if they choose. Or if they have the money they try travel somewhere else to a private facility and pay for surgeries or services they need.
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Great article, thank you!
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