This BBC TV broadcast reports on the strategy to make living itself an illness and patients of everyone of us. The programme website says:
“In the late seventies, Henry Gadsden, the CEO of a large pharmaceutical company, told a business magazine that the industry had a problem. In treating disease, they were limiting their client base. But by reinventing illness, treating the well and making the taking of prescription drugs as everyday as chewing a stick of gum, they could medicate modern life itself.
From ADHD in children to the way GPs diagnose depression in adults, we look at the deals that have transformed the way we talk about and treat mental health. But what has been their real legacy? Jacques Peretti investigates the deals struck between health professionals and pharmaceutical companies and questions whether Gadsden’s dream to medicate modern life has finally been realised.”
You can watch this 1 hour programme here. It’s the final programme in a three-part series (the other two programmes look at work and money, respectively).
A book, written by Jacques Perretti, accompanies the series: you can find out more here.
Other posts about collaborative practice:
Person-Centred Practice at the Difficult Edge
Why popping a pill for every emotional problem is madness: Antidepressants and antipsychotics are now doled out in their millions… but an expert argues they can make your condition WORSE
Primum non nocere: an evolutionary analysis of whether antidepressants do more harm than good