{"id":105565,"date":"2018-01-29T12:00:10","date_gmt":"2018-01-29T12:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=105565"},"modified":"2018-01-27T12:26:02","modified_gmt":"2018-01-27T12:26:02","slug":"how-big-pharma-infiltrated-the-boston-museum-of-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/01\/how-big-pharma-infiltrated-the-boston-museum-of-science\/","title":{"rendered":"How Big Pharma Infiltrated the Boston Museum of Science"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Featured in Bloomberg Businessweek<\/p><\/div>\n

23 Jan 2018 – <\/em>Do you overeat? Did your boyfriend just break up with you? Does no one return your emails? Do you fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning? If so, you may be suffering from mental illness! Mental illness is a highly stigmatized, life-long condition, that millions do not even realize they have and only a pharmaceutical drug can fix says Pharma and its operatives.<\/p>\n

Few marketing gambits have been as successful as Pharma\u2019s elevation of everyday symptoms into \u201cmental illness.\u201d It has enabled it to aggregate \u201cpatient\u201d groups to petition lawmakers, insurers and Medicaid and Medicare for payment of high-priced psychiatric drugs. It has allowed\u00a0groups like<\/a> the Pharma-funded Active Minds and NAMI to infiltrate college campuses and proclaim the ups and downs of growing up and college life \u201cmental illness\u201d\u2013\u2013growing the market. And now it has allowed it to infiltrate Boston\u2019s Museum of Science.<\/p>\n

Last spring an exhibit called Many Faces of Our Mental Health debuted at the museum, taking Pharma\u2019s everyone-is-mentally-ill message to museum goers and the general public. Visitors to the exhibit \u201cmight gain new insights and better understand the complex nature of mental health,\u201d said the press release. They might \u201creflect on how mental health affects their own lives or the lives of friends and family.\u201d Hey, they might have \u201cmental illness\u201d too!<\/p>\n

Funders of the exhibit included the Pharma-backed<\/a> NAMI and the Sidney R. Baer, Jr. and Sidney A. Swensrud foundations both of which stress screening and early intervention for childhood \u201cmental illness.\u201d Both mechanisms are\u00a0widely seen<\/a> as a way to grow the market for psychiatric drugs. In fact, the Baer Foundation funds the\u00a0Pharma-funded<\/a> Joan Luby who not only finds mental abnormalities in toddlers, she thinks they are present<\/a> in \u201clate preterm\u201d babies!<\/p>\n

There is no biological test for \u201cmental illness\u201d\u2013\u2013whether depression, anxiety or bipolar disorder\u2013\u2013and until recently, depression and anxiety were not even considered \u201cmental illness.\u201d Now, television drug ads, faux patient groups and faux public service announcements and online quizzes have produced a groundswell of self-diagnosed \u201cmentally ill\u201d people. Pharma funded patient groups like Active Minds and NAMI have even made the badge of mental illness \u201ccool\u201d on high school and college campuses.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen insurers balk at reimbursing patients for new prescription medications,\u201d says the\u00a0Los Angeles<\/a> Times, these groups \u201ctypically swing into action, rallying sufferers to appear before public and consumer panels [and] contact lawmakers.\u201d<\/p>\n

With an estimated one quarter of the population now taking expensive psychiatric drugs, Pharma\u2019s everyone-is-mentally-ill ploy enriches Wall Street and raises our health care costs. Gone are\u00a0the days<\/a> when bad moods were attributed to problems with finance, romance, debt, jobs, housing, careers, family, marriages and health. Worse, Pharma\u2019s everyone-is-mentally-ill ruse siphons off legitimate, activist anger at a government system that keeps people poor and powerless by suggesting they have a\u00a0personal problem<\/em> and the answer is a happy pill. Also known as\u2014retreat into individualism.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople living with mental illness can lead very productive lives and this exhibition highlights this important concept,\u201d said Christine Reich, vice president of exhibit development and conservation, about the Museum of Science exhibit adding this commercial for expensive Pharma drugs: \u201cMental illness is greatly affect[ed] by the treatment options that are available.\u201d<\/p>\n

_______________________________________<\/p>\n

Martha Rosenberg is a freelance journalist and the author of the highly acclaimed <\/em>Born With A Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp The Public Health, published by Prometheus Books.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 intrepidreport.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you overeat? Did your boyfriend just break up with you? Does no one return your emails? Do you fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning? If so, you may be suffering from mental illness! Mental illness is a highly stigmatized, life-long condition, that millions do not even realize they have and only a pharmaceutical drug can fix says Pharma and its operatives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":74043,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}