Pathologizing Life

In this audio documentary, popular PBS television host and award-winning documentary filmmaker, Gary Null, Ph.D., examines the mental health crisis in the United States today. More than forty million of its citizens are diagnosed as having depression or some other form of mental illness. An increasing number of these are children, the elderly, and African-Americans. And yet to look at the unprecedented growth of consumer services and information in the medical field, one would suppose that our mental health is being properly serviced. So why are so many mentally ill? It's been said that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When all you have to treat mental illness are psychotropic drugs, then you look for symptom clusters which would indicate prescriptions for these drugs. Vitamin and mineral deficiencies, hypoglycemia, hormone imbalance, and organ pathology can all mimic depression. But all too often the cure-all is a pill.

More than forty million of its citizens are diagnosed as having depression or some other form of mental illness. An increasing number of these are children, the elderly, and African-Americans. And yet to look at the unprecedented growth of consumer services and information in the medical field, one would suppose that our mental health is being properly serviced. So why are so many mentally ill? It's been said that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When all you have to treat mental illness are psychotropic drugs, then you look for symptom clusters which would indicate prescriptions for these drugs. Vitamin and mineral deficiencies, hypoglycemia, hormone imbalance, and organ pathology can all mimic depression. But all too often the cure-all is a pill. Are psychiatrists therefore manufacturing mental illness, creating increasingly arcane diagnoses - such as "oppositional defiance disorder" for teenagers who talk back to their parents - in the service of a booming psycho-pharmaceutical