User Reviews

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.

"Marketing of Madness" was reason for much gratitude with me. It confirmed with examples and facts what I had suspected as I saw my husband deteriorate week after week after a misdiagnosis: "Usually when people say they are exhausted, they are actually depressed". This was a shock to us, a huge lie, later proving itself more and more how big a lie. The mistaken diagnosis does not present itself with identical symptoms in all patients, some present with life threatening blood-pressure, etc.

Sinism about hearing the truth does not take away the facts of what is happening round about us. Many people are going through life in subdued "zombi-ness", tranquilized by pills. For example, Exhaustion diagnosed as depression because "usually when people say they are tired they are actually depressed". This is a lie told by doctors to many patients in my experience, making money out of misdiagnoses, destroying people's health.

This is what I saw with my own eyes and heard, long before I had heard about the CCHR or "marketing madness"-ideas. Seeing the DVD just confirmed what I already knew from experience, even without the technical facts. Even GP's are keen to make a quick long-term buck from Rx - not even knowing / realizing they are destroying people's self-respect, their quality of life, their social life, their uniqueness, etc.

We are supposed to be unique. We are supposed to acknowledge our shortcomings and learn how to deal with our own inadequacies like temper etc. Life-skills should be compulsory. Conformity not so. We should learn about God's love for us, He gave us free choice, free pill-choice is not from Him. We have so much to offer each other because we are different. Please let us not box each other into little molds? Watch the DVD right through, and acknowledge to yourself where you recognize the truth.

"Marketing of Madness" is not only informative, it is also a tool to bring the truth across, a persuasive confirmation of "where there is smoke, there is a fire" - in this case, a wild fire killing and debilitating previously healthy people - making whatever complaints they had, so much worse.

Why general physicians and psychiatrists alike prescribe these drugs to the unsuspecting public still beats me, quite a few have not done their homework.. though currently the lie is still overwhelming.

A lot of people think that mental illness is not real. A broken bone can x-rayed & felt. Red blood cells can be counted. A tumour can be held in the hand. But mental illness has no such easy quantifiability. So depression & anxiety & attention deficit disorders can be easily brushed off as a lack of discipline, a lack of character, an excuse to get out of work. Normal emotional fluctuations being labelled as a medical condition.

Such people are going to love "The Marketing of Madness". The agenda is clear and uncompromising - mental illness is not a measurable or proved phenomena, therefore the drug industry is peddling dangerous pills that do not treat anything.

The very term "mental illness" doesn't help. The word "mental" implies that the condition is within the conscious control of the sufferer, i.e. they are choosing to be ill, or pretending to be ill. We don't call a concussion a mental illness, yet a concussion involves the brain & has no higher claim on reality than a serotonin or dopamine imbalance. It's just that a concussion is more measurable and observable, a bit like the moon being more measurable & observable than the Milky Way's black hole. The existence of black holes must be inferred as they cannot be seen directly.

The observance & diagnoses of mental illness should be considered in the same spirit. The physical & neurological tests for headaches are broad & only generally indicative (eg fatigue, nausea, dizziness, high blood pressure) but does that mean headaches don't exist ?

This "documentary" utilises the same information deception techniques that it purports to expose. It does not give both sides of the story. Not one person is shown expressing satisfaction with even one drug. Statistics given by the program are questionable - the interviewees seem to be making them up as they go along. The study linking psychotropic drugs to car crashes is not named, yet its numbers are presented as factual. The credibility of the interviewees should also be regarded as suspicious. Much screen time is given to a chap who has reached the dizzy heights of "registered nurse". How this makes him qualified to analyse the behaviour of pharmaceutical companies over the last 70 years is a bit of a mystery. Other interviewees include a chemist, a family physician, a lawyer, not one but two naturopaths (!) and not one but two journalists. Whistleblower psychiatrists were nowhere to be found. Wow, what a line up; Glaxo-Smith-Kline & Roche must be quaking .....

The program gleefully rakes the history of psychiatry over the coals. No one denies that 80 years ago, inappropriate drugs were prescribed to those experiencing severe mental illness. Of course it could be argued that opium, cocaine, heroin and Thorazine were the best options available at the time, but you won't hear any expert on this show giving any benefit of any doubt. The thinking seems to be that if psychiatry was incompetent and borderline fraudulent in 1930, then the same holds true in the 21st century. It repeatedly insults psychiatrists, implying that they are not real doctors and have only reached such a status in the minds of the public by heavy marketing.

Very generously, it is admitted that psychological, emotional and "mental distress" conditions do exist but doctors worldwide and the public worldwide have been "fooled" by the drug companies into thinking that such conditions are in fact medical conditions and may benefit from drugs. The tone of the whole program is "not proved, not proved", but this is a long, long way from "we have disproved".

Despite relentless attack, the script never actually has the courage to draw a line in the sand & state, "Valium does not work. Prozac does not work." The program NEVER cites any studies that indicate such drugs do NOT work. Instead we get scorn heaped upon half-baked sanity experiments done 50 years ago. We also get an anti-capitalist argument, that drug companies make loads of money, therefore they are evil. Patents expire, new drugs are marketed, therefore they are evil. This is the documentary's message that I didn't really understand - they make loads of money therefore mental illness doesn't exist ?

So is there anything good at all about this program ? Without relinquishing its determination to be biased & ignore all opposing points of view, it scores big points when attacking the many editions of the DSM, especially the non-scientific & perhaps even haphazard methodology of its authors. Another successful attack is launched at drug trials and their lack of independence. Conflict of interest has never been a secret in the drug industry, and this doco makes sure you know all about it.

Of course the drug industry pays for research and trials. Who the hell else is going to ? It's a bit like saying the car industry is sinister because it researches new engines and does safety tests. Again, who the hell else is going to do it ? If it were left up to the government to commission and pay for truly independent research, not a whole lot would get done, and it could be argued that the end results would not necessarily be any safer.

The program's attack on Teenscreen actually trips itself up monumentally. A stream of numbers & faces condemning mass screening for depression as a huge generator of false positives, then lets it slip that teen suicide is on the decline. Well just maybe mass screening is saving & improving lives. Maybe the teen demographic was colossally under-diagnosed in the 20th century.

The whole mental illness thing is an imprecise science, but it's all real.

While the documentary makes some good points criticizing the many editions of the DSM, overmedication, and lack of independence in drug trials, the whole documentary seems very biased and poorly researched. For example, in the first few minutes they claim that "psychotropic medications have no visible or measurable physical abnormalities to correct", which numerous independent studies can prove otherwise. Aside from this, the whole time I was watching this I felt like I wasn't getting the other side of the story and was intentionally being deceived. As another review mentioned, this documentary utilizes the same information deception techniques that it purports to expose. It does not give both sides of the story. Not one person is shown expressing satisfaction with even one drug.