The psychopharmaceutical complex

Abstract

This chapter presents sociological critiques of biopsychiatry, including Beck's critique in Risk Society. Interactions between drug companies, researchers, government agencies, and medical organizations are framed within Breggin's construct of the psychopharmaceutical complex. The construction of knowledge formed by the processes of the psychopharmaceutical complex implicates pharmaceutical companies in the systematic promotion of drugs for a burgeoning number of psychiatric disorders, ultimately leading to the mass medication of citizens in the last half of the 20th century, particularly in the United States. A review of the literature raises serious questions regarding whether the reliance on psychotropic drugs is leading to cures for psychiatry diseases, or is in fact manufacturing the opposite. The literature indicates a significant risk that treatments are potentially brain-disabling and create long-term disability. Claims and counterclaims in relation to scientific fact are reviewed with a specific focus on the use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) drugs with children and adolescents. The role of pharmaceutical companies in the control of academia, the construction of knowledge, and the manipulation of governments to increase sales of their drugs is documented. Ultimately, these processes create images of a risk society in which human rights disappear into the vacuum of individual immorality and corporate greed-the essence of modern evil. © 2006 Humana Press Inc.