professor of social work-- an excerpt from a lecture

Biological psychiatry, in an unholy symbiosis with the drug industry, has actively
promoted the view that people’s emotional problems are symptoms of diseases of the
body (brain), usually resulting from genetic abnormalities. The number of social,
economic, spiritual, psychological, and educational problems considered to be or treated
as diseases has, needless to say, increased dramatically over the last quarter century —
a trend commonly referred to as medicalization (e.g., Conrad & Schneider, 1992).
The unchecked medicalization of distress of course cannot have only positive
implications: it also carries its share of intellectual mystification, iatrogenic injury, and
sociocultural decline. Fully a quarter of the population is implied to be genetically
deficient because affected with “diagnosable” or “treatable disorders” (Mental Health,
1999). In one of history’s strangest social experiments, up to 15% of children in North
America are given stimulants and other drugs to make them conform to schools’
expectations. Long term psychotropic drug use can be shown to be detrimental for
individual brains. Will it be shown to be detrimental for the species’ evolutionary
capacity? (Fukuyama, 2002; Nesse & Berridge, 1997) In human bodies, families, and
groups, drugs only seem to blunt people’s responses to stress — drugs neither banish
stress or the sources of stress, nor do they enhance people’s capacity to cope with
stress (Mirowsky & Ross, 2003).
It goes without saying that people suffer and undoubtedly, ways exist for people
whose lives have been disrupted by the slings and arrows of fate to benefit from the
psychological and behavioral alterations produced by psychotropic drugs. However, the
all-too-commonly-accepted views that medication can solve distressed people’s
problems, or that medication should be the most easily and widely available
intervention, need urgently to be re-evaluated and contextualized. In particular, it hardly
seems possible today to use the findings of countless clinical trials in
psychopharmacology to enlighten us about the potential benefits and psychological
effects of drugs, or to inform us accurately about drugs’ potential risks, and certainly not
to suggest what might be “ideal” conditions for drug use in helping relationships.
In sum, the experts have failed the public and no one wishes to be held
accountable. It is almost as if the entire edifice of psychopharmacotherapy must be torn
down and rebuilt from scratch, with participation from anyone who wishes, as long as
their contributions are transparent (since they cannot be guaranteed to be principled).
The implications are numerous and enormous. Here is just one implication: it is time for
more social workers to become seriously engaged in the critical evaluation and the
reconstruction of the psychotropic drug treatment enterprise.