I’ve written several posts in the past months in which I’ve highlighted the dramatic rise in diagnoses of mental illness in North America in the last 30 years. In addition to the rise in diagnoses, there are other related happenings that have been growing in significance, and I’ve also featured some of these in my posts. They include such things as the insurance payment structure in America lending itself to drug treatment over talk therapy and the growing list of disorders that is included with each new revision of the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual (DSM).

Pinning down exactly how these things (directly or indirectly) have a connection to the increase in mental illness diagnoses is undeniably complicated—perhaps impossible to prove—but I absolutely believe they are interrelated. There are even more factors in play than those about which I’ve written, and this post will touch on another: drug advertising.Continue Reading