Psychiatry, Pills, and the Business of Mental Health: Who Profits From Your Pain?
Walk into a psychiatrist’s office today and the script feels predictable: a short consultation, a few standardized questions, and a prescription. The brand name may change — Zoloft, Prozac, Lexapro for depression; Xanax, Ativan, Klonopin for anxiety; Ambien, Trazodone for sleep — but the message is the same: “Your brain is chemically imbalanced, and this pill will fix it.”
At first glance, this seems scientific, efficient, and humane. But dig deeper and you find a system designed less to cure and more to manage — a cycle of medication, refills, and dependence that enriches pharmaceutical companies, insurance giants, and, at times, even the doctors themselves.
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From Human Care to Big Business
Psychiatry wasn’t always like this. In its early decades, it aspired to understand the whole person: childhood, relationships, purpose, environment, and biology. By mid-century, however, the rise of pharmaceutical giants reshaped the field.
• In the 1950s, Thorazine was hailed as the first “antipsychotic miracle.”
• The 1960s brought antidepressants.
• By the 1990s, SSRIs were marketed with slogans about “fixing serotonin levels,” even though the serotonin-imbalance theory remains unproven to this day.
Gradually, psychiatry drifted from a human science into a trillion-dollar industry. Drug companies gained, insurers profited from endless visits and lab tests, and psychiatrists became intermediaries between patient and pharmacy.
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A Personal Case: When You Become the Medication
I know this cycle intimately. After being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I was placed on a carousel of medications: Risperidone, Olanzapine, sleeping pills, anti-anxiety meds, antidepressants.
At first, they helped. They dulled the edges, softened the chaos. But soon, they dulled me. I wasn’t myself anymore; I was a sedated version of myself. One day I told my psychiatrist: “I’m done.” And I began the long journey of tapering off. Painful, risky, but ultimately freeing.
This doesn’t mean psychiatry is useless. My father depends on psychiatric medication to live a stable life, and for him — as for millions — these drugs are lifesaving. But it does mean not everyone belongs on this conveyor belt. Millions are being medicated not because they truly need it, but because the system makes it the default.
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The Real Roots of Psychological Pain
Before we call everything a “chemical imbalance,” let’s look around:
• Loneliness: Studies show chronic loneliness is more deadly than smoking. A person living alone without meaningful daily human contact is at extreme risk of depression and anxiety.
• Food: In the 1980s, tobacco companies like Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds quietly bought major food brands like Kraft and Nabisco. The same engineers who made cigarettes addictive began designing processed foods to be “hyper-palatable” — engineered combinations of sugar, fat, and salt that hijack the brain’s reward system.
• Technology: A life spent glued to a smartphone, feeding on notifications and shallow digital contact, leaves the nervous system in constant fight-or-flight. Is it any wonder that people feel anxious, restless, and numb?
Much of what we call “mental illness” is an expected outcome of modern life.
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Nature’s Forgotten Medicines
The natural world offers solutions we’ve ignored:
• Saffron: Clinical trials suggest it rivals some antidepressants in elevating serotonin and dopamine.
• Ashwagandha: Reduces cortisol, the stress hormone, and improves sleep.
• Simple human habits: Sleep, movement, meaningful conversation, time outdoors, love, and purpose.
These don’t cost $400 a month, so they rarely make it into the doctor’s first line of treatment.
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Conspiracy or Economics?
There’s an old saying in medicine: “A cured patient is a lost customer.”
Pharmaceutical companies don’t profit when you heal; they profit when you stabilize — just enough to function, but dependent enough to refill the prescription.
Most psychiatrists are good, ethical people. But the structure around them is industrial. Thousands of patients, minutes per session, lives reduced to bullet points in an electronic health record. The humanity of the patient is replaced by a billing code.
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The Bigger Picture: Body and Mind Are One
What we eat, how we sleep, the quality of our relationships, the presence or absence of purpose — these shape the brain as much as, or more than, neurochemistry. Yet the mainstream model remains pharmacological.
Even more troubling, psychiatric drugs are recycled across disorders. The same medication prescribed to someone with schizophrenia might also be given to someone with bipolar disorder, generalized anxiety, or severe insomnia. This “one size fits all” approach reveals how little we truly know about the brain. Science admits: for many conditions — bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, ADHD — the exact causes remain mysterious. But treatment is often reduced to trial-and-error with the same handful of pills.
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Conclusion: Toward a More Honest Psychiatry
The truth lies in balance:
• Some people absolutely need psychiatric medication, sometimes for life. For them, these drugs are the difference between life and death.
• But millions are medicated because it is faster, cheaper, and more profitable than addressing the roots: isolation, poor diet, lack of meaning, absence of community.
The human mind is not just a chemical machine. It is body, brain, relationships, purpose, and story. If you medicate away the symptom without addressing the root, you haven’t healed — you’ve only managed.
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✦ When someone says, “I’m depressed,” but they live alone, eat fast food daily, scroll their phone endlessly, and have no real conversations, should the first step be a pill?
✦ Or should we first rebuild what makes us human: connection, nourishment, sleep, love, purpose?
Psychiatry should not be about selling pills. It should be about helping people become whole again.
