Big Pharma's Next Big Thing: Antipsychotic Medicines for Preschoolers

Deinstitutionalisation is the practice of moving people (especially those with mental disorders and developmental disability) from mental institutions into community-based or family-based environments.

The idea took hold in various countries in the 1950s and 1960s^[1] as a cost saving measure, or a sensible alternative to state hospitals, as long as the discharged patients were serviced in their new community health centers and were able to take their necessary medications. New psychiatric medications were thought to have made it also possible to release this population into the community safely. ^[2]

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On the other hand, organizations with thousands of members such as MindFreedom International and World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry and The Citizens Commission on Human Rights, maintain that psychiatrists exaggerate the evidence of medication and minimize the evidence of adverse drug reaction. They and other activists also complain that individuals are not given sufficient balanced information or truly informed consent; that current psychiatric medications do not appear to be specific to particular disorders in the way mainstream psychiatry asserts [10]; and that psychiatric drugs not only don't correct measurable chemical imbalances in the brain, but also induce undesirable side effects. For example, though children on Ritalin and other psycho-stimulants become more obedient to parents and teachers, critics have noted that they also develop abnormal movements such as tics, spasms and other involuntary movements [11].

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The influence of pharmaceutical companies is another major issue for the antipsychiatry movement. The pharmaceutical industry is one of the most profitable and powerful in existence, and as Joe Sharkey has argued there are many financial and professional links between psychiatry, regulators and pharmaceutical companies. Drug companies routinely fund much of the research conducted by psychiatrists; routinely advertise medication in psychiatric journals and conferences; routinely fund psychiatric and healthcare organizations and health promotion campaigns; and routinely send representatives to lobby general physicians and politicians. Sharkey and other investigators of the psycho-pharmaceutical industry maintain that many psychiatrists are members, shareholders or special advisors to pharmaceutical or associated regulatory organizations [12].

The systemic wide practices of deinstitutionalization, community based mental health care, and the wide spread medicating of the masses are all interconnected as a pharma based market and revenue stream generation strategy.

If it wasn't planned it CERTAINLY was recognized and maximized for profits.