Abstract
This chapter describes crisis in identity that psychiatry underwent in the late 1970s with the transition from the asylum era to that of mass-marketing of mental illness. This era was exemplified by psychiatrist Harold S. Koplewicz, author of It’s Nobody’s Fault: New Hope and Help for Difficult Children, a leading proponent of bio-genetic explanations for mental illness, as well as one of the twenty-one notional authors of GlaxoSmithKline’s infamous Study 329 of Paxil. This chapter features my interview with Vickie, who at the age of ten was prescribed Paxil for “social anxiety disorder” (by a doctor who said her condition was probably hereditary), and who suffered devastating, life-long consequences.
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Notes
- 1.
D.L. Rosenhan, “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” Science, 179, no. 4070 (January 19, 1973): 250–258, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.179.4070.250
- 2.
Ibid., 251.
- 3.
Ibid., 251.
- 4.
Ibid., 253.
- 5.
Ibid., 252.
- 6.
Ibid., 252.
- 7.
Ibid., 252.
- 8.
This crisis is documented by author Robert Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America (New York: Broadway Books, 2010), 263–268. For a contemporary view of the crisis, see Anonymous, “Psychiatry On The Couch: To Shake The Blues, Freud’s Disciples Seek New Directions,” Time, April 2, 1979, http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,916740,00.html
- 9.
Thomas S. Szasz, The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961).
- 10.
E. Fuller Torrey, The End of Psychiatry (Radnor: Chilton, 1974).
- 11.
Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic, 267–268.
- 12.
Ibid., 265–266.
- 13.
Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic, 268–282.
- 14.
Ibid., 276–280.
- 15.
Ibid., 274–275.
- 16.
Patrick D Hahn, “A Mania for Drugging Children,” Nine-part series in the Canada Free Press, July 25–August 2, 2016, https://canadafreepress.com/article/he-was-a-beautiful-child
- 17.
Steven Faraone, “Discussion of ‘Genetic Influence on Parent-Reported Attention Related Problems in a Norwegian General Population Twin Sample,’” Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 35, no. 5 (1996): 598.
- 18.
Ibid., 598.
- 19.
Harold S. Koplewicz, It’s Nobody’s Fault: New Hope and Help for Difficult Children (New York: Random House, 1996).
- 20.
Ibid., 5–6.
- 21.
Ibid., 7.
- 22.
Ibid., 7–8.
- 23.
Ibid., 47.
- 24.
Ibid., 51.
- 25.
Ibid., 51.
- 26.
Ibid., 52.
- 27.
Ibid., 53.
- 28.
Ibid., 55.
- 29.
Ibid., 67.
- 30.
Ibid., 67.
- 31.
Rob Waters, “Johnny Get Your Pills,” Salon, June 17, 1999, https://www.salon.com/1999/06/17/antidepressants/
- 32.
Ibid.
- 33.
Martin B. Keller et al., “Efficacy of Paroxetine in the Treatment of Adolescent Major Depression: a Randomized, Controlled Trial,” Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 40, no. 7 (July 2001): 762–772, https://doi.org/10.1097/00004583-200107000-00010.
- 34.
Joanna LeNoury et al., “Restoring Study 329: Efficacy and Harms of Paroxetine and Imipramine in Treatment of Major Depression in Adolescence,” BMJ 2015; 351:h4320 https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h4320; Peter Doshi, “No Correction, No Retraction, No Apology, No Comment: Paroxetine Trial Reanalysis Raises Questions About Institutional Responsibility,” BMJ, 351, (2015), https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h4629.
- 35.
Panorama, “Secrets of Seroxat,” Narr. Shelley Jofre, BBC, October 13, 2002.
- 36.
Panorama, “Seroxat: Emails From the Edge,” Narr. Shelley Jofre, BBC, May 11, 2003; Panorama, “Taken on Trust,” Narr. Shelley Jofre, BBC, September 21, 2004; Panorama, “Secrets of the Drug Trials,” Narr. Shelley Jofre, BBC, January 29, 2007.
- 37.
Gardiner Harris, “FDA Panel Urges Stronger Warning on Antidepressants,” New York Times, September 15, 2004, https://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/15/health/fda-panel-urges-stronger-warning-on-antidepressants.html
- 38.
Gardiner Harris, “FDA Toughens Warning on Antidepressant Drugs,” New York Times, October 16, 2004, https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/16/politics/fda-toughens-warning-on-antidepressant-drugs.html
- 39.
Irving Kirsch, The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth (London: Bodley Head, 2009).
- 40.
Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic.
- 41.
“GlaxoSmithKline to plead guilty and pay $3 billion to resolve fraud allegations and failure to report safety data,” United States Department of Justice, accessed September 6, 2017, https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/glaxosmithkline-plead-guilty-and-pay-3-billion-resolve-fraud-allegations-and-failure-report
- 42.
Charles Riley and Emily Jane Fox, “GlaxoSmithKline in $3 Billion Fraud Settlement,” CNN, July 2, 2012, https://money.cnn.com/2012/07/02/news/companies/GlaxoSmithKline-settlement/index.htm
- 43.
Don Kaplan, “NYU Squeezes Kiddie Shrinks,” New York Post, January 312,011, https://nypost.com/2011/01/31/nyu-squeezes-kiddie-shrinks/
- 44.
“About Us,” Child Mind Institute, accessed July 10, 2018, https://childmind.org/about-us/
- 45.
Kaplan, “NYU squeezes kiddie shrinks.”
- 46.
Abby Ellin, “When a Child’s Anxieties Need Sorting,” New York Times, June 3, 2011, https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/fashion/when-a-childs-anxieties-need-sorting.html
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Hahn, P.D. (2019). The Mass-Marketing of Mental Illness. In: Madness and Genetic Determinism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21866-9_6
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