On 18 April
2012, the Citizens’ Commission for Human Rights (CCHR) organized a lecture in
Geneva, Switzerland, on the marketing of psychiatric diagnoses and medications
and their adverse effects on health. Dr.
Nicolas Franceschetti, President of CCHR, Geneva, introduced the evening by
referring to recent developments such as the British Medical Journal article published on 27 February 2012 warning about the deadly
adverse effects of regular ingestion of hypnotics (sleeping pills) which
include shortening of lifespan and cancer.
A nurse who
works at a “home” for aged persons (EMS) in Switzerland gave testimony of the
over-prescription of medications to the elderly in these establishments.
Extracts of
the documentary, “The Marketing of Madness” were shown. (YouTube access to the 177-minute film is available at the end of the article). The film discusses “how psychiatric
medications with deadly side effects and no known rate of cure came to dominate
the field of mental health”, for example through the drawing up of the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV). This manual creates “disease out of everyday suffering
and as a result, pads the bottom lines” of pharmaceutical companies (ref:
“Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness”, by Gary Greenberg, 27 December
2010, Wired Magazine). Another example is the prescription of
atypical antipsychotics to some 2.5 million children in the United States. This new type of psychiatric medication,
which includes Risperdal and Zyprexa, can cause weight gain, cardio-vascular
dysfunction and Parkinson’s disease-like symptoms. These drugs sometimes require the
prescription of other psychotropic medications to lessen side-effects, a
practice called “poly-pharmacy”.
