<p>+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br />|  Mass Psychosis In the USA?<br />|   from the don't-actually-want-to-be-sedated  dept.<br />|   posted by timothy on Saturday July 16, @08:17 (Medicine)<br />|    with 431 comments<br />|   <a href="https://science.slashdot.org/story/11/07/16/036230/Mass-Psychosis-In-the-USA?utm_source=newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email">https://science.slashdot.org/story/11/07/16/036230/Mass-Psychosis-In-the-USA?utm_source=newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email</a><br />+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />[0]Hugh  Pickens writes "James Ridgeway writes in Al Jazeera that with<br />over $14  billion in sales in 2008, antipsychotics have become the<br />[1]single  top-selling therapeutic class of prescription drugs in the<br />U.S., surpassing  drugs used to treat high cholesterol and acid reflux.<br />While once upon a time,  antipsychotics were reserved for a relatively<br />small number of patients with  hard-core psychiatric diagnoses, today it<br />seems, everyone is taking  antipsychotics. 'Parents are told that their<br />unruly kids are in fact bipolar,  and in need of anti-psychotics, while<br />old people with dementia are dosed, in  large numbers, with drugs once<br />reserved largely for schizophrenics,' writes  Ridgeway. 'Americans with<br />symptoms ranging from chronic depression to anxiety  to insomnia are now<br />being prescribed anti-psychotics at rates that seem to  indicate a<br />national mass psychosis.' By now, just about everyone knows how  the<br />[2]drug industry works to influence the minds of American doctors,  plying<br />them with gifts, junkets, ego-tripping awards, and research funding  in<br />exchange for endorsing or prescribing the latest and most  lucrative<br />drugs. According to Marcia Angell, former editor of the New  England<br />Journal of Medicine, under the tutelage of Big Pharma, we are  'simply<br />[3]expanding the criteria for mental illness so that nearly everyone  has<br />one.'"<br /><br />Discuss this story at:<br /> <a href="https://science.slashdot.org/story/11/07/16/036230/Mass-Psychosis-In-the-USA?utm_source=newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email#commentlisting">https://science.slashdot.org/story/11/07/16/036230/Mass-Psychosis-In-the-USA?utm_source=newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email#commentlisting</a><br /><br />Links:<br /> 0. <a href="http://hughpickens.com/">http://hughpickens.com/</a><br /> 1. <a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/07/20117313948379987.html">http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/07/20117313948379987.html</a><br /> 2. <a href="http://unsilentgeneration.com/2009/04/06/big-pharma-psychs-out-the-shrinks/">http://unsilentgeneration.com/2009/04/06/big-pharma-psychs-out-the-shrinks/</a><br /> 3. <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jun/23/epidemic-mental-illness-why/">http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jun/23/epidemic-mental-illness-why/</a><br /><br /></p>