Saving Normal: An Insider's Revolt against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life

For a significant percentage of people with mild or transient symptoms, SSRIs are nothing more than very expensive, potentially harmful placebos.

Disease mongering cannot occur in a vacuum—it requires that the drug companies engage the active collaboration of the doctors who write the prescriptions, the patients who ask for them, the researchers who invent the new mental disorders, the consumer groups that advocate for more treatment, and the media and Internet that spread the word.

But DSM-5 seemed to be moving in just the wrong direction, adding new diagnoses that would turn everyday anxiety, eccentricity, forgetting, and bad eating habits into mental disorders.

attention deficit/hyperactivity has tripled52; and adult bipolar disorder doubled.

poppers. One out of every five U.S. adults uses at least one drug for a psychiatric problem; 11 percent of all adults took an antidepressant in 2010;1 nearly 4 percent of our children are on a stimulant2 and 4 percent of our teenagers are taking an antidepressant;3 25 percent of nursing home residents are given antipsychotics.4 In Canada between 20

Millions of people take medicine they don’t need for a diagnosis of MDD that they don’t really have, on the false assumption of chemical imbalance.30,31,32

Because it sets the crucial boundary between normality and mental illness, DSM has gained a huge societal significance and determines all sorts of important things that have an enormous impact on people’s lives—like who is considered well and who is sick; what treatment is offered; who pays for it; who gets disability benefits; who is eligible for

But there is a catch. The boundaries demarcating the different disorders are ever so much fuzzier in real life than they appear to be on paper. There is really nothing magical or preordained about any of the DSM thresholds—shades of gray exist between their seemingly black and white cutoff points. Requiring five symptoms and two weeks for major dep

The concern arises from a recent study showing that 56 percent of our experts had some financial connection to drug companies.