Big Pharma Wants You Drugged And Not Healthy
Saw the following posted in my email, and it triggered several aspects I have not really shared save in some comments and posts.
So, I’m going to remedy this now.
First the post that started all this…
Metal Health: Pill Pushing
From the Substack, South Dakota Voices (all rights belong to South Dakota Voices)…
According to the World Health Organization, “Mental health is a state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realize their abilities, learn well and work well, and contribute to their community.”
This definition sounds a little like word soup. Yes, some people are mentally disabled and until about 45 years ago, most of these people were kept in mental hospitals. Then in 1981, President Reagan closed these hospitals and these people were given medications and released into society. Beyond this small group, most people at that time were well equipped to function in society. Of course there were ups and downs to life, but most people could navigate things quite well on their own.
One has to wonder why we have such an elaborate definition of mental health today. Was it because we normalized mental disabilities? Was it because we moved from more personalized medicine to more definition-based medicine? Was it because of a marketing push? Something else?
Perhaps it was a combination of things. Beginning in the 1970s, medicine began to change rapidly. We gradually (and then more rapidly) developed a wide array of tests that could be used to check everything from vitamin levels to cancer markers. In addition, researchers attempted to correlate those readings with illnesses. Once an illness was defined, pills were created to address the symptoms.
During this period, healthcare morphed into a massive business, complete with massive marketing budgets and sales people.
Mental health was part of this massive escalation in legal drug use. In 2025, revenue from mental health is projected to reach about $39 billion worldwide with about $11.82 billion of that spending in the US.
Drug companies spend millions on “mental health awareness” campaigns that encourage struggling people to seek self-understanding and relief from doctors. Not surprisingly, about 16.5% of the population in the U.S. is on some type of pharmaceutical medication for mental health. One has to wonder if this is reasonable or necessary. And whether we might really be creating dependence and mental issues, rather than making life better for people.
Excellent Perspective by a Commentator
One of the comments found me sharing my own experience with my son, and my former, while another comment provided a video that speaks to all of this…
The 80s ushered in a different socioeconomic environment in which working people and middle-class folks began to lose ground.
Maintaining the status quo required 2 paychecks, and people worked longer before retirement.
This meant children were often not raised by family through necessity, not choice.
Mothers went back to work just a few weeks after giving birth.
Parents were more stressed, and that translated to more stressed-out kids.
Other developed nations supported families by providing free childcare and parental leave.
Progressive taxation and regulation of businesses provided living wages for workers.
Instead of instituting policies and programs that supported the general public, the United States increasingly supported policies that transferred wealth from the working and middle classes to the very wealthy, beginning with Reagan and continuing to now with only brief reprieves.
The growing number of people in poverty and the threat of poverty for many who before 1980 would have felt financially secure are most surely part of the increasing problem of mental health issues.
Sharing My Experience…
After my son had been on ADHD drugs, I was wondering how much of this was brought on by improper diet and processed foods.
Some background is needed: my former is a nurse and believes there is a pill for everything; I believe food is our medicine.
The diet my kids had was mostly takeout, as evidenced by the overflowing trash bins in the driveway.
The first time they had Thanksgiving with me, I had invited a friend and her 2 kids - my son mentioned they never had everyone sitting at the same table at the same time.
That was way more than concerning, as I had been divorced from their mother for nearly 15 years at the time.
The following summer, my kids arrived for their annual month-long stay, and I had discovered before their arrival that my son was taking a prescription for ADHD for more than a year.
Don’t know how long he had been on them as neither of them could remember when he started taking them.
Remembering what I saw from the trash bins, all sorts of red flags were popping up.
I asked my daughter what she was witnessing about her brother -
figety
drifting attention
not sleeping regularly (many times up all night on the PC, only to sleep all day in classes - his horrendous grades [Ds and Fs] only underlining the whole situation)
I took his prescription from him and we went on a disciplined diet and regimen, promising him if something didn’t change soon, he would get the pills back…
The regimen…
3 meals a day - meat, vegetables, starch (potato or rice), milk (incl. breakfast)
NO processed foods nor drinks
No soda, no reconsituted anything, no power drinks
All fresh vegetables, fruits, fresh milk, and water were bought from the farmers’ market and nearby farms
We went for a brisk walk every evening and spent the mornings outside for about an hour
TV was limited to 1-2 hours, PC was limited to 1 hour
Everyone went to bed by 11, and no electronics (their phones were kept in my BR)
I brought them to a bookstore to buy whatever books they wanted (I dealt with quality reading later).
After just 3 days, my daughter shared she already noticed a difference.
After week 1, he was convinced and wanted to learn to cook.
So much for all the apprehension both of them had.
His skin tone changed, his eyes cleared, his focus was sharp, and his thinking was even sharper.
And no nervous habits - no biting his nails down to half of what they should be, no bouncing knees, no needing to get up and move around just for the sake of moving around.
When they went home, he made the mistake of telling his mother what transpired, and she blew a gasket.
He eventually hid his prescriptions and tossed his daily dosage down the toilet.
He went on to learn how to cook for a career, none of it involving processed foods.
How We Got Here
We are programmed by our education and medical systems and all that was flipped on its head by Andrew Carnegie and John D Rockefeller in the 1910s.
JDR wanted to recoup the loss of his cherished Standard Oil empire and discovered he could use petrochemicals in pharmaceuticals.
Abraham Flexner was hired by Carnegie to undertake a study on how to convert the education and medical industries for the sole purpose of using petrochemical pharmaceuticals (which can be patented) instead of natural remedies (which cannot be patented).
Patents would become a cash stream.
The report was aptly called the Flexner Report.
JDR and Carnegie used Flexner's report to change both the education and medical professions within a decade.
Medical colleges either complied or would not receive their funding from the Carnegie and/or Rockefeller Foundations.
As a result, the number of medical professionals shrank…
The number of medical schools declined from 190+ in 1912 to 76 in 1930
The number of physicians per 100,000 capita decreased from 157 in 1900 to 125 in 1930
The number of medical students decreased in parallel, from 28,142 in 1904 to 13,798 in 1920
Plain and simple - they made medical school expensive to attend, and the hospitals not abiding by their 'recommendations' saw their financial backing dry up.
Fast forward to the last 15 years, more than 100 natural remedy doctors who had been vocal about using natural remedies died unexplainedly, all under very suspicious circumstances (example, suicide by 2 shots to the back of the head - apparently the doctor was a zombie SMH).
Many more are reporting threats.
Independent doctors are particularly being persecuted by the State Medical Boards for the flimsiest of excuses, the most public of cases being Dr Mary Tally Boden in TX.
The policies outlined in the Flexner report, as well as Obamacare, are responsible for everything in the medical industry being expensive (little-known fact - Obamacare ceased for the people; hospitals maintain Obamacare within its administration).
We are where we are because we have permitted it for more than a century, and Big Pharma is not taking No for an answer.
It is our due diligence to make sure that it is their problem, not ours.
Laura Delano: How Big Pharma Created the Mental Health Crisis
Doctors told a teenage Laura Delano she had something they called bipolar disorder, and then proceeded to make her legitimately crazy with psych drugs.
She’s one of the few who recovered.
Laura Delano is an author, speaker, and consultant, and the founder of Inner Compass Initiative, a nonprofit organization that helps people make more informed choices about taking and safely tapering off psychiatric drugs.
She is a leading voice in the international movement of people who’ve left behind the medicalized, professionalized mental health industry to build something different.
Laura has worked as an advocate within and beyond the mental health system, and has spent the past 13 years working with individuals and families around the world who are seeking guidance and support for psychiatric drug withdrawal.
Her book, Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance, was published in March 2025.
Sources
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0039368124000670
https://daily.jstor.org/the-1910-report-that-unintentionally-disadvantaged-minority-doctors/