ABLECHILD: The Mental Health System of the Nation is Driven by Money

The Mental Health System of the Nation is Driven by Money

Republished with permission from AbleChild

As the old saying goes, “money is the root of all evil” and when it comes to the status of the nation’s mental health, it’s clear that the more money that is thrown at the behavioral health industry the worse the nation’s mental health becomes.

Globally, $23 billion is spent on mental health “treatment” and is expected to increase to $30 billion by 2030, a mere five years from now. What this means is that millions of people will get new mental illness diagnoses in the coming years and will be “treated” with expensive drugs that don’t “treat” any known abnormality.

Antidepressant drugs lead the way on spending on the psychotropic drug class (mind-altering) and among the pharmaceutical companies that benefit financially is Pfizer. That’s right, the pharmaceutical company that brought the world one of the Covid mRNA vaccines that many believe was neither safe nor effective, reaps a healthy payday from its antidepressant drug line, including Pristiq, Zoloft, Effexor XR and Nardil.

It would be remiss not to mention that Pfizer also is the pharmaceutical company that holds the dubious distinction of receiving the stiffest $2.3 billion settlement with the US government for illegally marketing drugs for off label uses not FDA approved. That settlement included a $1.195 billion criminal fine (the largest in history).

But these “fines” are bumps in the road and usually baked into the product by the pharmaceutical bean counters and the drug pay day far exceeds any fines. For example, according to Mordor Intelligence, North America is the largest psychotropic drug using country and antidepressants held nearly 45% of the psychotropic drugs market share. The overall US revenue for antidepressant drugs was projected to be nearly $9 billion in 2024.

Pfizer Pharmaceutical is the psychotropic drug industry leader, followed by Eli Lilly and Johnson and Johnson making up the top three. Antidepressants lead the list of global psychotropic drug markets, followed by antipsychotics, and depression leads the market by indication or diagnosis. It is of interest that stimulants like the ADHD “treatment” Adderall are looking at becoming the fastest growth driven drug class because of increased adult diagnosing and telehealth prescribing.

So, it all sounds wonderful. Life is beautiful all the time. The pharmaceutical companies are meeting the needs of the mentally ill by providing mind-altering drugs as “treatment” and making a lot of money at the same time. But along with that “treatment” comes the question of suicide.

The United States leads the world in antidepressant use and also leads the industrialized world in the number of people committing suicide. It is possible that it is only a coincidence that the US takes the greatest number of antidepressants and those antidepressants carry the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Black Box Warning for suicidality. That’s right. The FDA warns that the antidepressant “treatment” and cause someone to commit suicide.

Further, it cannot be ignored that the US also spends more money on mental health than all other industrialized countries. In fact, the federal government is the primary payer of mental health services, peaking at nearly $75 billion including substance use care through its low-income Medicaid program. Oh, and let’s not forget that nearly half of these substantial financial benefits are provided to individuals under 20 years old. And another 35%, one in three adults, make up a large portion of mental health benefits provided by the federal government.

The outrageous amount of money being thrown at behavioral health can easily be explained when one grasps the fraud of psychiatric diagnosing. For example, there is no known abnormality in the brain for any psychiatric diagnosis. That’s a fact. The biological model of mental illness is a bust, a failure and a fraud. More than 100 years of research and still the medical community cannot come up with even one test that will reveal any abnormality that is any mental disorder.

Without any proof whatsoever, the psychiatric industry has been allowed to “diagnose” people with mental disorders that are not based in science or medicine. So, it is not surprising that every year the number of people diagnosed with a mental disorder increases.

According to a recent Gallop poll, the percentage of US adults “suffering” from depression stands at just under 19 percent or 48 million American adults. In fact, the rate of depression has doubled since 2017 from 13% to nearly 27% in 2025. Why? Because those doing the diagnosing don’t need any proof of an abnormality to diagnose and drug.

But here’s the kicker. Not only is there no science/medicine associated with the diagnoses, the pharmaceutical companies, like Pfizer, that produce the mind-altering drugs used to “treat” the alleged disorder admit they have no idea how the drugs “work” as “treatment.”

For example, the package insert for Pfizer’s Zoloft (Sertraline) reports the Pharmacodynamics (the way the drug works) as “the mechanism of action of sertraline is presumed to be….” Presumed? After decades and millions of people being prescribed Zoloft, the best the company can come up with is “presumed.”

The same explanation is true of all the SSRI class of antidepressants so it’s no wonder, then, that the pharmaceutical companies, along with the behavioral health “experts,” are drowning in money. How perfect. There is no proof of an objective, confirmable abnormality that is any psychiatric diagnosis and the pharmaceutical companies have no idea how the “treatments” “work.”

If the psycho/pharma industry is allowed to get away with this fraud, the number of people being diagnosed as mentally ill will continue to increase and the money being thrown at the mental health “crisis” will increase. It’s a perfectly lucrative vicious cycle where no one gets better…they just get more drugged.

Be the Voice for the Voiceless

AbleChild is a 501(3) C nonprofit organization that has recently co-written landmark legislation in Tennessee, setting a national precedent for transparency and accountability in the intersection of mental health, pharmaceutical practices, and public safety.

What you can do.  Sign the Petition calling for federal hearings!

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