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Monday, June 06, 2011

The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why?

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Marcia Angell

It seems that Americans are in the midst of a raging epidemic of mental illness, at least as judged by the increase in the numbers treated for it. Are we simply expanding the criteria for mental illness so that nearly everyone has one? And what about the drugs that are now the mainstay of treatment? Do they work? If they do, shouldn’t we expect the prevalence of mental illness to be declining, not rising?

An advertisement for Prozac, 
from The American Journal of Psychiatry, 1995

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