The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why? Because

In case you missed it (posted on the WTCI Facebook page-slash-sidebar), here’s a two-part New York Review of Books take down of modern-day psychiatry: The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why? and The Illusions of Psychiatry.  And here’s a take down of the take down from The Last Psychiatrist:  The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Because.  From there:

Being anti-Pharma is hardly edgy business; it’s now the established intellectual position of most academics, not to mention everyone.  Insurances are refusing to pay for the branded psych drugs, doctors are being forbidden from consulting; and, simultaneously, Big Pharma is abandoning psychiatry.  Pfizer has all but closed its CNS division, temporarily pretending to still care about something called Pristiq that no one takes.  By next year, all of your love-to-hate drugs– Zyprexa, Geodon, Seroquel– will be generic.  There are no new blockbusters coming, no innovative treatments, no Big Pharma research money.  By 2013, you’ll have gotten what you were not careful to wish for.

UPDATE:  Another response in the NYT: In Defense of Antidepressants.

AND:  Psychiatrists respond at NYRB.