It is sad that sniveling, "poor me" diary excerpts like Szalavitz' have become the new journalism norm. And it is scary that such self-disclosing swill casts Big Pharma and its products as the public' mental health savoir.

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"Like Kennedy, I recovered from heroin addiction," begins a guest essay in the New York Times this week by Maia Szalavitz. "When I became profoundly depressed several years into abstinence, antidepressants revolutionized my recovery." The Kennedy she is referring to is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK, Jr.), nominated to head the US Department of Health & Human Services.

It is hard to know which is more offensive in Szalavitz' oped: her paean to Prozac, other psych drugs and weepy victimhood--"For the first time, I was able to feel comfortable socially, without the harms of addictive drugs," she snivels--or her brazen shilling for Big Pharma.

Of course, Szalavitz' screed against abstinence-based, drug-free recovery (and against RFK, Jr.) is no surprise: Big Pharma has tried to monetize such programs for years by funding rehab programs and finessing diagnoses to include their drugs. (more on this later). Why should drugmakers and Wall Street not be in on the addiction gravy train?

Addiction Expert? Really?

As an "addiction expert" Szalavitz is woefully ignorant. Does she not realize that most if not all mass shooters are on the happy pills she extols and that psych-drug related suicides are rife including in the military? (underreported by a media funded by drug ads)

Does she not realize the same drugmakers who hooked people on opioids also profit from opioid "recovery" drugs--unabashedly playing both sides of the street?

Does she not realize the putative addiction "benefits" of GLP-1 agonists that she exalts all derive from "research" funded by drugs' makers, from their clinical trials or from the doctors they fund? Once upon a time, these claims would have been called conflicts of interest.

Why is there little media mention of the GLP-1 agonist eye risks, negative mental effects, surgical risks and their links to thyroid tumors, pancreatitis, hypoglycemia, kidney failure, cancer and gallbladder harm? What about the drugs' addictiveness when they are stopped? (underreported by a media funded by drug ads)

Selling Disease to Sell Drugs

Like the many drugmakers-funded patient front groups like the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention who now hide their funding behind "foundations," Szalavitz sees "mental illness" everywhere. To monetize recovery, drugmakers have elevated anxiety and depression to "mental illness" and have "dually diagnosed alcoholics and drug addicts with "major depressive disorder" and "bipolar disorder" so they are lifelong Pharma customers. Ka-ching.

Final Ironies

It is a final irony that ubiquitous "everyone-is-mentally-ill" and "everyone-needs-psych-drugs" messages are funded by the corporations and health insurers that most media sources and their reporters say they detest. Are you listening New York Times?

It is also an irony that if RFK had an addiction ("like" Szalavitz--as she says by way of comparison) he has seldom to never spoken of it.

It is sad that crybaby, "poor me" diary excerpts like Szalavitz' have become the new journalism norm. And it is scary that such self-disclosing swill casts Big Pharma and its products as the public's mental health savior.

(Article changed on Dec 25, 2024 at 3:48 PM EST)

Authors Bio:

Martha Rosenberg is an award-winning investigative public health reporter who covers the food, drug and gun industries. Her first book, Born With A Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp The Public Health, is distributed by Random House. Rosenberg has appeared on CSPAN and NPR and lectured at medical schools and at the Mid-Manhattan Public Library.