The conspiracy of the medicated generation

According to the official figures one in four of the UK population will suffer from some form of mental health problem and many will be prescribed one of the many pharmacological drug treatments to alleviate symptoms and control the underlying conditions. The trouble is that these figures don't give the real picture, for two reasons. Firstly the figures are for the UK population as a whole, rather than split out into age groups, and secondly the figures fail to demonstrate change over time, and these are serious omissions. When you drill down further into the figures and explore the age aspect and the rate of change the story is strangely similar. In the under 40 age group the rate of mental health issues rises to an almost unbelievable one in two for women and one in three for men, the sex discrepancy being almost certainly due to mens reticence to discuss mental health concerns with medical professionals. Having established this rather higher figure it will come as no surprise that the number of people at any one time with a mental health disorder is rising sharply.

Now, there are several valid reasons for this including the increased awareness of mental illness, the campaigns to remove some of the stigma of a diagnosis of mental illness and a better understanding amongst medical professionals of the symptoms and indicators of mental health issues. However, even taking all of these reasons into account there is still a discrepancy between the figures and the number of people being diagnosed and therefore medicated, so the question is, why is this the case? The background to this lies with the pharmaceutical industry. For many years there has been a schism between drug manufacturers and doctors in that doctors, through their training and the Hippocratic oath are bound to attempt to heal their patients ills, whilst the drug companies are bound by their owners and shareholders to maximise profit. This dichotomy represents most strongly in the understanding that people who are well tend not to require the products made by the drug company so doctors making people well adversely affects drug company profits.

There is no clearer area of this than in the field of mental health. Through control and manipulation of the medical establishment the drug companies have been able to drive legislation and therefore prescription criteria. The way that this works is by funding universities and research institutes, alongside infiltrating the upper echelons of government legislature thereby creating a situation in which doctors are actively encouraged by drug companies and advised by institutions funded by drug companies to prescribe drugs for mental health conditions that would be better treated with counselling or therapy, drugs that alleviate symptoms in preference to ones which will effectively treat the condition, and drugs that serve little or no purpose as a treatment for the condition in question. Of course, there is another, more sinister aspect to this story. The medications that are used to treat many of these conditions have a range of side effects including decreased motivation, decreased libido, decreased intellectual and critical faculties and reduced ability to function effectively. Now, who could possibly benefit from side effects such as these? Who stands to gain from large sections of what have been the most politically active sections of society being reduced in their capacity to protest? Answers on a postcard please....

The mental health conspiracy – Part I

There are any number of reports coming out telling us that more and more people suffer from mental health problems, but it may be time to question whether this is the case, and perhaps as importantly, whether there are any nefarious reasons if this is the case. There seems to be a three pronged approach to mental health in general, and to the more moderate forms of mental illness, depression, anxiety disorders and the like. The first is an ongoing advertising and marketing campaign to encourage social acceptance of mental health issues, generally along the line of suggesting that everyone has some degree of mental distress at some point in their life and that there should be no social stigma attached to it. At first glance this appears to be nothing but a good thing. The more people accept mental health the more likely those who are ill are to do something about it. We will come back to that. The second prong is the increase in focus on specific groups within society who are viewed as being more at risk, particularly adolescents, new mothers, people involved in stressful situation such as marriage break up and so on. Again this appears to be a good thing. Psychologists have established that certain groups, at certain times are more prone to suffering mental illness so focusing attention and highlighting mental health care to those groups makes good sense perhaps.

Then we come on to the third prong. This is somewhat more troubling as it stems from an rather strange and worrying new phenomenon. More and more there are cases of children being placed on social services watch lists and in some cases being taken into care ostensibly because the mother is described as being mentally ill. The mother is generally then assessed as suffering from either depression, stress or anxiety and is typically referred for a combination , of counselling and drug therapy, on the explicit understanding that this is a condition of being granted the children back. Now, this is a rather different situation to the other two strands, but this allows for the possibility that perhaps there is more to the other two than meets the eye. Taken as a combined approach the three prongs can be seen to be establishing that mental illness is socially acceptable, that it is prevalent amongst many disparate groups of both genders and all ages, and that getting help with mental illness is of benefit to families. Again this could all be seen as a positive thing, until you begin to look at the treatment of mental illness.

In the UK most mental illness is treated by a combination of neuro-chemicals, psychoactives and cognitive or talking therapies such as cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) or neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). The way that these therapies work is by adapting and changing thought processes through linguistic techniques, and through deep relaxation techniques, rather similar to hypnosis techniques. It is interesting to note that many pharmaceutical treatments for mental illness have a side effect of making the recipient more susceptible to suggestion, or effectively more easily hypnotised. So, we have a situation where more and more people are being diagnosed as being mentally ill, and a recognised treatment regime that is designed to make them more susceptible to suggestion and more compliant. Wouldn't it be terribly paranoid to try to link these in any way? But then, paranoia is a mental illness, so perhaps I should be good and report me mental illness to my GP because it is socially acceptable, and then, for the good of may family and friends, I should be good and take my medication and attend my therapy sessions, and then maybe all of these bad thoughts, all of these fears will go away and I'll stop worrying about the environment, and the wars around the world, and the corruption in government and corporate business and everything else. Wouldn't that be nice?