Article Mental Illness Is Not in Your Head: Decades of biological research haven’t improved diagnosis or treatment. We should look to society, not to the brain.

Article about the history of American psychiatry. Does a good job of explaining how structures of healthcare delivery, directly affect delivery of care

https://bostonreview.net/articles/mental-illness-is-not-in-your-head/

Excerpt

But if the pharmaceutical industry has invested so heavily in psychiatry, why have there been no breakthroughs in drug treatment? A major reason is that the industry has spent billions of dollars more on advertising psychiatric medications than on research and development of novel drugs. As psychiatrist David Healy has shown, money earmarked for R&D is often not intended to produce genuine innovation. Almost all of the psychopharmaceuticals produced since 1990 have been “copycats” that mimic older, generic pharmaceuticals, with only minor chemical modifications. These (unfortunately named) “me-too” drugs work no better clinically than the drugs that came before them, but their slight biochemical novelty means that they can be patented, so that pharma can charge insurance companies’ top dollar.

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