The Medicalisation of Normality

"Mislabeling everyday problems as mental illness has shocking implications for individuals and society: stigmatising a healthy person as mentally ill leads to unnecessary, harmful medications, the narrowing of horizons, misallocation of medical resources, and draining of the budgets of families and the nation. We also shift responsibility for our mental well-being away from our own naturally resilient and self-healing brains, which have kept us sane for hundreds of thousands of years, and into the hands of 'Big Pharma', who are reaping multi-billion-dollar profits."




"Over the last 40 years The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – the bible of the psychiatric professions – has spawned more and more diagnostic categories, "inventing" disorders along the way and radically reducing the range of what can be construed as normal or sane. Meanwhile Big Pharma, feeding its appetite for profits and ours for drugs, has gained an ever greater hold over our mental and emotional lives, medicalising normality.

The more studies that come along to tell us about the rise in mental illness, the more we fit our problems and unhappiness into a category of mental disorder, developing symptoms to take to the doctor in search of a cure. Humans are suggestible creatures. And doctors like to help: they provide the pills Big Pharma recommends, though many must now know that research has shown placebos can work just as well and with fewer side effects."




"ADHD, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, was conceived at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in 1987. It was brought into being by a show of hands, and duly included in a textbook, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Psychiatrists consider it a real disorder, but for those who use scientific evidence to support claims of an illness, it’s fictional. To this day, there have been no scientific tests to support the existence of ADHD.

Then, there are the diagnostic criteria. Whichever way you try and bend them, the criteria are still reflective of normal childhood behaviour. They include “often has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks or play activities”; “often has difficulties organising tasks and activities”; “often avoids, dislikes or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort”; “often loses things necessary for tasks or activities”; “is often forgetful in daily activities”; “is often on the go”; “often talks excessively” and “often interrupts or intrudes on others”. It’s a reclassification of normal behaviour with a scientific-sounding, made-up label.

Then, there are the drugs that produce nullifying effects and which are hailed as ‘demonstrably effective’. All that has happened is the person has been drugged, and is exhibiting the effects of a dangerous, mind-altering foreign substance in his or her body. Psychiatric drugs have an effect on a person: they will keep him/her quiet and compliant, but drugs don’t cure anything.

The fundamental contradiction lies in the fact that psychiatrists manufacture the labels, they diagnose the ‘disorders,’ and they prescribe the drugs.

If psychiatry was against the medicalisation of normality, then ‘disorders’ like ADHD would be scrapped, the drugging of children would decrease, and the real cause of problems would be found and treated, using less invasive treatments. It’s time for change."