Money, Psychosis, Big Pharma
“For decades, antipsychotic drugs were a niche product. Today, they’re the top-selling class of pharmaceuticals in America.” Duff Wilson on the shadowy underworld of big pharma.
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“While the effectiveness of antipsychotic drugs in some patients remains a matter of great debate, how these drugs became so ubiquitous and profitable is not. Big Pharma got behind them in the 1990s, when they were still seen as treatments for the most serious mental illnesses, like hallucinatory schizophrenia, and recast them for much broader uses, according to previously confidential industry documents that have been produced in a variety of court cases. Anointed with names like Abilify and Geodon, the drugs were given to a broad swath of patients, from preschoolers to octogenarians.”
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