Beware the Psychiatric Pharmaceutical Complex

If business is slow, do something about it. Create a market. One that might not have existed before. It's called entrepreneurial marketing. And in some markets the potential for expansion is quite simply amazing. Take, for example, the human mind. Take, for example, people, individuals, each and every one spectacularly unique. Like snowflakes, each one formed by ice crystals in various wonderful shapes - no two, we are informed by those who know, alike its neighbour.

Something like people, come to think of it. We are all so different from one another. We've our inherited genetic qualities, and then there are learned behaviours resulting from exposure to various situations and experiences combining with our inherent character to create, all together, a completely individualistic personality. All of us are distinctly ourselves, with the things in life that we value and others that we shrink from.

We are moderate, well-balanced, socialized creatures for the most part, but we can also be people-averse, phobic cranks. And, of course, everything in between. In some areas of the world people who behave truly oddly are simply labelled eccentrics and they are not only tolerated, but often admired as well, for their different responses to life's experiences. The great mass of people, however, prefer to be like everyone else, and thus unnoticed.

But then there are those who are flamboyant, ecstatic about life and its possibilities, energetically seeking opportunities others would far rather bypass. And, of course, the sociopathic element of any society who are emotionally detached and soured by life, unwilling to share with society and often enough given to unethical, sometimes violent responses to societal norms. We have them all. In some dire instances, control is imperative.

And psychiatry is busy labelling everything, placing characteristics and phobias and confusions and antipathies into neat categories. All of which, once studied and filed neatly into separate and distinct types can be labelled mental illnesses which should be treated by those very psychiatrists whose business it is to identify, quantify, qualify and prescribe.

The public is more aware than ever that there is a steadily growing categorization of human attributes and behaviours and pathologies. Some of which never quite existed before, and which are now recognized as needful of close scrutiny and control. A former American wartime general and later president of his country mouthed a cautionary "beware the military-industrial complex". We can neatly paraphrase it as "beware the psychiatric-pharmaceutical complex".

The latest revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has been drafted for publication. This is a manual used world-wide by psychiatrists whose interest in treating patients fitting into its neat classifications has enabled the profession to grow in lock-step with the steadily growing identification of newly-recognized mental illnesses plaguing society. This manual now lists 357 human mental disorders.

Everything from diagnoses of attention-deficit disorders; hyperactivity, autism and childhood bipolar disorder (manic depression) in children - for they're never too young to be recognized as being in some way abnormal by their obstreperous and disorderly behaviour that was once seen as normal, if irritating - requiring costly and time-consuming professional treatment along with appropriate medication.

And there are other criteria and classifications newly recognized and coined, like children with persistent "negative mood" and frequent temper tantrums; this new illness is labelled "temper dysregulation disorder with dysphoria". Right, and there's "behavioural addictions" where we recognize problem gamblers. Soon to be joined by Internet and sex addictions.

Behaviours that are seen as socially deviant; pornographers, sexual predators, hypersexuality. These are mental conditions, not instances of human beings losing touch with rational and decent decision-making, succumbing to the allure of the societally (and morally) forbidden, edging into the realm of indecency and outright violations of human rights - of others, of course.

It is unfortunate that some of these potent pharmaceuticals now being prescribed for these unfortunate conditions have other, inimical effects on the human system, but that's life. Fix one thing and another thing goes awry. Nature, it would appear, has done a half-assed job in her production of the human spirit and psyche, and our emotions and hormones simply carry us away into morbid insanity.

Begin with new mental-disease classifications that are diagnosed by readily recognizable symptoms listed in the new manual, and suddenly there's an epidemic of people suffering from disorders society never knew existed, and had always attributed to anti-social or undisciplined behaviour. The underlying reason is much more sinister; mental illness, and not merely apprehended psycho-social maturity.

Identify the problem, assure the patient (and often the law enforcement agencies) and begin treatment. Last year alone, the burden on the country's universal health care system was huge, and it is steadily growing. Pharmaceuticals are taking up an increasingly-large share of the health-care budget. Last year in Canada pharmacies dispensed 61.2 million prescriptions.

Canada has a population of 33 million souls. Are we all mad?