Big Pharma Covert Marketing Win: SAMHSA Lauds Biden’s $68.5 Million Grant for Mental Health Services

Robert Carter/October 4, 2024

     The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) applauded last month the Biden Administration grants of $68.5 million for behavioral health education, training and community programs.

     SAMHSA has been one of the chief suppliers of mental health statistics to Mental Health America, which bills itself as the nation’s leading national non-profit dedicated to the promotion of mental health, well-being, and illness prevention. Mental Health America asserts that 20 percent of Americans experience mental health issues, but that 56 percent of those people do not receive any treatment for their condition.

     Those statistics are frequently quoted in the media to show the mental health epidemic the country is now facing. Keeping people in fear is standard fare for the media, of course, but these statistics are also used to make Big Pharma’s myriad medications to “solve” this problem seem more essential, even given the Black Box warnings of their suicidal side effects.

     But where do those SAMHSA statistics about the nation’s mental health come from?

     Since the Covid years, a good portion of them come from short, on-line screening questionnaires that people can take to see if they are suffering from depression or anxiety, among other mental health issues. The nine brief questions they are asked are of the “In the last two weeks have you felt noticeably sad about an event in your life?” format.

     These questions for each of the SAMHSA screening forms were written by psychiatrist Robert L. Spitzer of Columbia University and his third wife, Janet Williams, now Professor Emerita of Clinical Psychiatric Social Work at Columbia University. The funding for their work was through a grant to Columbia by Pfizer, the manufacturer of Zoloft and the first Big Pharma company to broadly advertise the now debunked “chemical imbalance” theory as a cause of mental illness.

     Pfizer also financed the British screening questionnaire now used by the National Health Service on people to see – some would say “suggest” – the possibility of a mental illness condition.

     Biden’s $68.5 million dollar grant can now help usher into the mental health treatment industry those screened candidates who have self-diagnosed as having emotional stress. The 56 percent of untreated American respondents then become an ideal new market for Pfizer’s antidepressants.

     It’s hardly surprising that it is Biden’s administration that has made these mental health grants available.
From 1990 to 2024 Senator Joe Biden was the highest congressional benefactor of Big Pharma money. In his career he was given $9,056,663 in donations from Big Pharma companies like Pfizer.

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