Why Big Pharma Targets Women… besides Huge Profits, Of Course

     The most recent CDC study of antidepressant use in America (2018) showed that about 14 percent of all Americans were prescribed antidepressants, but less than 9 percent of all American men were. However, 19 percent of all American women were, and an amazing 25 percent of older American women were prescribed antidepressants.

     Is that just because U.S. Big Pharma mostly targets women with their antidepressant marketing, or is there another, less obvious factor?

     Two thirds of all electroconvulsive treatments are given to women, as well. Why is that? Big Pharma makes no profit from ECT. There must be another factor involved here.

     There is.

     A psychiatric diagnosis is necessary for a woman to be prescribed antidepressants or to be given ECT. These diagnoses target women with a DSM label for their  “mental disorder.” Does that mean women are generically more unstable – more “hysterical,” to use the male-dominated Victorian Era term – than men?

     Ironically, 80 percent of all psychiatrists are women. They may be the ones  writing the prescriptions, but they’re not the ones coming up with the DSM diagnostic categories.

     The psychiatrists on the DSM committees are mostly guys. Female psychiatrists do not often end up in  leadership roles in that field. Instead, they predominate in academic fellowship and residency positions and in private practice.

     None of the three hundred or so “mental disorders” listed in the DSM are based on any scientific evidence. There is no  “chemical imbalance,” nor any other proven physical cause, behind any of these diagnoses. They’re voted on by majority rule in the DSM committees, and so they are all, strictly speaking, merely opinions about symptoms that may or may not even have been directly observed.

     Whose opinions?

     Guys’ opinions.

     Of course, Big Pharma does target women in their antidepressant marketing campaigns, but far worse, the whole psychiatric system of diagnosis is rigged from the get-go to pin women to the bulls-eyes of these “mental disorders.”