This documentary weighs in at nearly three hours, but if you have ever taken or are likely to take psychiatric drugs, you should watch it all the way through at least once. If one tiny criticism is to be made of it, it is that nowhere does it mention Thomas Szasz, who although very elderly was still very active at the time it was made. It is to Szasz more than anyone else that we owe its thesis. Which is what?
Mental illness does not exist. Get that? This statement requires some qualification. An illness has a pathology; it is caused by a bacterium or a virus; in the case of degenerative diseases there may be neither of these, but if a victim dies of a heart attack, an autopsy will reveal the build-up of atheroma. A mental illness has no pathology, so how can it be treated? People who suffer brain damage may experience headaches or other symptoms, they may exhibit strange behaviour, but no one considers someone with brain damage to be mentally ill. Mentally imparied, maybe, but not a regular "loony".
The first edition of the "DSM" was published in 1952, and listed 106 supposed mental disorders (said here to be 112). The 1968 edition contained 145; "DSM IV" listed 374. From whence come all these new mental illnesses? Would you believe they are voted into existence? That would be laughable, but what is not laughable is the second part of this film's thesis, one that was shared by Thomas Szasz and is still shared by Peter Breggin, him and a growing number of dissidents. This is that psychiatric drugs do far more harm than good, and that there is a morbid, incestuous relationship between the drug companies and the medical establishment, and indeed between the drug companies and elements of the US Government, read between the drug companies and any individual or organisation that will take their filthy lucre.
At this point I should declare an interest; I have been on painkillers since October 1988, even more so since November 1993 when a second and unrelated injury was inflicted on me. Because of this, I am nothing like as cynical about Big Pharma as many of its detractors; I realise drugs are expensive to develop, and recognise that without drug companies the quality and indeed the quantity of life for many people would be very much reduced. By the same token, we should all appreciate a police force that protects us, keeps the peace, and brings wrongdoers to book, but when that same police force beats up citizens, breaks up peaceful meetings unlawfully and fits up people it doesn't like for murder, the time has come to reign it in. Whatever good drug companies do in other fields, they and their collaborators in the psychiatric industry and elsewhere cannot be permitted to trample over at times vulnerable people in pursuit of profit.
This film includes massive documentation that cannot be refuted, and covers everything from road rage (a crime dressed up as a mental disorder) to nonsense like compulsive shopping disorder (invented by a drug company shill) to Internet addiction disorder (originally a joke), fraudulent clinical trials, placebo washout, and the Rosenhan experiment.
It tackles the dangerous lunacy of medicating the young, branding them as suffering from all manner of imaginary disorders, explains how often mental disorders, so-called, are linked to real problems in our lives, and finally gives a short overview of treating disturbed people without frying their brains with dangerous drugs that can shorten their lives, drive them to despair, suicide, or even to mass murder.
