Ethics Paper for Business Law
Pharmaceutical Companies & Psychiatry

The rise in Psychiatric drugs began around the 1950’s with the introduction of Thorazine. Several years later Prozac was introduced and since then hundreds of different psychiatric medications have been produced and used. Since this time more and more people have become dependent on the prescribing of and ingestion of psychiatric medications. The pocketbooks of the pharmaceutical companies and psychiatric doctors have swelled with the amount of money that has been generated from the production and sale of prescription drugs. People who have consumed these drugs over the last 60+ years have also changed for the worse. Though there have been many people who have positively benefited from these medications, more have suffered from them and the abuse attributed by the unnecessary prescribing of medications for profit. With depression, stress and anxiety on the rise the psychiatric industry has lost their way. Instead of doing everything they can to fix the problem, they are masking it by prescribing medication that may or may not be helpful to the patient. Many of the reasons for this increase in prescriptions are due to the “gifts” that those in the medical field receive by the pharmaceutical companies. In as little as 5 years’ time the increase in drug maker payments to psychiatrist were around $1.6 million dollars which is an increase of around 600% from the prior years. Some of the most affected people of this problem are children. The increase of prescriptions to child have risen over 900%. All too often today the psychiatric professionals are more prone to labels instead of facing the reality that maybe there are other answers to the questions. Long ago when a child was restless, he or she was said to just be a normal hyper kid. Now these same “symptoms” are being diagnosed as ADD, ADHD, ODD, OCD, and Bipolar. 90% of the time no blood tests are taken, no brain scan performed, and limited exposure to the child before a prescription is written is completed. After the child takes the medication and the parents complain it did not work, the doctor in turn either increases the dose or prescribes another drug. These drugs entering into a still growing child, causes harm that is irreversible including potential death. All though the introduction of psychiatric drugs have decreased the number of people in mental health facilities it is increased the amount of diagnosed mentally disabled. Instead of medical facilities being over crowded, we now have hundreds of thousands receiving SSI or SSDI for some