I am incredibly appalled by this weeks readings. I will begin with a short story about past medical experiences, the information I grasped about Big Pharma, the DSM outcome, and the overall implications of this hegemony situation. During a past doctors visit I had tested high for blood pressure. I refused to take the medication they prescribed me, because I am 27 years old and it was just after one doctors visit with a new physician, which I found incredibly inappropriate. Next time I went in, guess what, my blood pressure was fine but I tested high for cholesterol. They again wanted to put me on medication, I refused again and said diet and exercise. It makes more sense to me after reading Allen Frances (2013) diagnostic inflation chapter, …show more content…
They make over $700 Billion dollars each year worldwide, spend 60 billion on commercials and lobbying, and 30 billion on research that aids their financial endeavours. Commercials that trick people into thinking they have a problem and that certain medications can solve it, when the pills are probably just placebos. Selling a lie that we can be a perfect society by popping pills. Disgraceful that Pharma came after children and elderly when their adult market seemed saturated. Appalling that they tapped into primary care physicians, instead of just utilizing and supplying psychiatrists because they wanted further outreach. This is why my primary care provider keeps trying to push pills on me. Furthermore, Big Pharma buries research that doesn’t suit their pharmaceutical mongering. I wonder if there some cures for certain types of cancers? Their power seems to have no bounds. Additionally, the writing of the DSM was affected by Big …show more content…
As it stands, the DSM-5 is solely used to help psychiatrists and psychologists communicate with each other, place labels and diagnosis to determine if insurance agencies must pay for care. This is a book for Big Pharma because it doesn’t mention drugs and treatments that should be administered. There is no research on the biological causes of mental disorders. Prevention is not a key element in the DSM. Of course Big Pharma wouldn’t want to list preventions or mention which medications work best for which disorder because they like to change them all the time. It’s upsetting that causes of disorders are not mentioned or elaborated on. The DSMs atheoretical approach segregates the scientific theories on psychopathology, genetics, neurobiology, and the cognitive sciences. I believe these to be of the utmost importance; in order to, propel our health care into the
This patient has been seen every 6 months for a focused physical examination with a total cholesterol, liver function panel and a FPG to evaluate his diabetes status and cholesterol management program. He has attended nutrition counseling in the past and has complied with lifestyle modifications including diet and exercise resulting in a weight loss of eight pounds over the past year. Over the pasts twelve months, this patient’s total cholesterol levels have significantly improved from 280 mg/dL to 190 mg/dL. This is the second time h...
Abramsons points are well taken, and it truly is a shame that the medical industry has become a business. In my opinion, if the pharmaceutical industry was taken out of the hands of the capitalist marketplace and given the to the government, it would become less of a business. Prescription drugs are not ordinary consumer goods; they are products that can ultimately save lives. If a money-oriented company controls these products, it is inevitable selling the drug would become a greater priority than actually creating a beneficial drug. Which as a result, will to the creation many well-marketed yet ineffective
In Melody Peterson’s “Our Daily Meds” , the history of marketing and advertising in the pharmaceutical industry is explored. The first chapter of the book, entitled “Creating disease”, focuses on how major pharmaceutical companies successfully create new ailments that members of the public believe exist. According to Peterson, the success that these drug manufacturers have experienced can be attributed to the malleability of disease, the use of influencial people to promote new drugs, the marketing behind pills, and the use of media outlets.
In order to take advantage of this demand, five billion dollars is spent by the pharmaceutical industry on marketing each year. This marketing, usually in the form of advertisements, often distorts facts and makes the necessity for drug treatment seem greater.... ... middle of paper ... ... Washington, D.C.:
...s that the DSM can also falsely determine ones specific mental health, showing the struggle between diagnosing someone with genuine disorders and excessively diagnosing individuals.
Reliability is the consistency of the assessment measurements throughout the test. Whereas validity is when the test actually measures what it is supposed to measure (Comer, 2013, pp.84). Now that we know what reliability and validity are, we can now apply it to DSM-5, but what is DSM-5? DSM-5 is shortened from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders and the five shows how much it has changed over the years. This classification wouldn’t be possible without Emil Krapelin, who developed the first modern classification system for abnormal behavior, which helped form the first DSM.
Why do consumers purchase specific drugs for various ailments, sicknesses or diseases they might have? Why do physicians prescribe certain drugs over competitive drugs that may be available to the public? Why is it that most of us can easily name specific drugs that fit the many ailments of today’s society? On the surface the answer might be as simple as good TV advertising or radio commercials or even internet adds. The truth of matter is the major pharmaceutical manufacturers own the patents on these drugs and this gives them all of the marketing budget and muscle they need to promote the drug and control the pricing. The incentives for larger pharmaceutical companies are very enticing and as a result, they don’t mind spending the time in clinical trials and patent courts to get their drugs approved. Some will even get patents on the process by which the drug is manufactured, ensuring that no competitor can steal the drug or the process. This protects their large financial investment and nearly guarantees a large return for their investors. Many consumer rights groups claim this is nothing more than legalizing monopolies for the biggest manufacturers.
Why are the prices so high? Some critics of the drug companies argue that the larger firms are ripping off the American public, are dishonest and, in some cases, unsafe. On the other hand, there are health care workers such as doctors and their supporters who claim that research and testing for drugs costs money. This supposedly justifies their prices for their products. Also, as an argument to their side, they say that their practice is a benefit to the improvement to mankind. It is a life saving business, but are these prices justified? As one can see, this is a very important issue in medicine today. It affects everyone involved with medicine, which is much of the American public. It also affects the physicians and drug makers.
Providing an all inclusive, concrete definition of what a mental disorder is a complicated task. Many factors are responsible for the development and presence of a disorder; therefore, pinpointing and providing a universal definition can be quite difficult. In order to provide a basic set of universal parameters in what constitutes and defines a mental disorder, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) was developed in order to help clinicians and providers navigate the many disorders. While the DSM provides a definition of mental disorder, different perspectives of psychology offer various views of mental disorder.
Psychiatry is a medical field that deals with the diagnoses, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. The FDA is constantly approving drugs for psychiatrists to use that are supposed to help with in their practice. For example, Michael Levin-Epstein, who wrote the article “A New Way to Deliver Psychiatric Meds: Drugs for ADHD and Major Depression Now Can Be Delivered with Skin Patches,” shows how pharmacotherapy is continually being advanced by new ideas and approaches. However, Psychiatric drugs are not always the answer. Prescriptions are not a good remedy when it comes to the overcoming of a mental illnesses, because there is not enough information regarding the effects of the drugs, pharmaceutical companies are driven by profits,
Mental disorders affect millions of people around the world, and it is the greatest untreated group of illnesses in the world. Many of the psychological disease are incurable only treatable or suppressed. There is very little research going into mental disorders due to the l...
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has been used for decades as a guidebook for the diagnosis of mental disorders in clinical settings. As disorders and diagnoses evolve, new versions of the manual are published. This tends to happen every 10 years or so with the first manual (DSM-I) having been published in 1952. For the purpose of this discussion, we will look at the DSM-IV, which was published originally in 1994, and the latest version, DSM-5, that was published in May of 2013. Each version of the DSM contains “three major components: the diagnostic classification, the diagnostic criteria sets, and the descriptive text” (American Psychiatric Association, 2012). Within the diagnostic classification you will find a list of disorders and codes which professionals in the health care field use when a diagnosis is made. The diagnostic criteria will list symptoms of disorders and inform practitioners how long a patient should display those symptoms in order to meet the criteria for diagnosis of a disorder. Lastly, the descriptive text will describe disorders in detail, including topics such as “Prevalence” and “Differential Diagnosis” (APA, 2012). The recent update of the DSM from version IV-TR to 5 has been controversial for many reasons. Some of these reasons include the overall structure of the DSM to the removal of certain disorders from the manual.
Six moths ago I scheduled a physical and blood work, a month later I was diagnosed with high cholesterol. My total cholesterol levels were at 250, with and LDL of 150, which puts me at a higher risk of cardiovascular illness. I was given the option of changing my eating habits with a combination of exercise to manage and lower my cholesterol levels, thus avoiding the need for medication. The dr. was very supportive, he had many helpful suggestions and showed me several ways in which I could lower my cholesterol by making simple food choices. After a long discussion I decided this was the way to go, I hate taking medication. When I reviewed the analysis report and saw that my cholesterol continues to be above the recommended range I let out a huge sigh, it took a few seconds to compose myself before I continued to look over it. This whole time I thought I had maintained my cholesterol under control, the analysis report proved that I was wrong. It is important that I make changes on how I eat. High cholesterol is indicative of cardiovascular illnesses that possibly result in serious chronic diseases. Diseases that are linked to high cholesterol are Coronary heart disease, peripheral vascular disease, diabetes and high blood pressure. The main risk from cholesterol is heart attacks. If the cholesterol remains high, it can build up overtime in the walls of the arteries forming a build up known as plaque. This plaque will cause the arteries
Originally published in 1952, the DSM has been through a number of revisions in its history. The original manual was the culmination of an extended journey of its own. According to Tartokovsky (2011), the DSM was born out of the need to minimize the confusion that had developed in the world of mental health care with regard to classifying disorders. Prior to this, there had been an initial attempt to create a system of classification that had emerged in 1917 known as the Statistical Manual for the Use of Institutions for the Insane. The manual was written by the early predecessor to the APA and wa...
Caplan, P. (2012), Psychiatry’s bible, the DSM, is doing more harm than good, The Washington Post, 27 April.