Disorders made to order: pharmaceutical companies have come up with a new strategy to market their drugs: First go out and find a new mental illness,

Disorders made to order: pharmaceutical companies have come up with a new strategy to market their drugs: First go out and find a new mental illness, then push the pills to cure it.

Mother Jones, July-August, 2002, by Brendan I. Koerner

Word of the hidden epidemic began spreading in the spring of 2001. Local newscasts around the country reported that as many as 10 million Americans suffered from an unrecognized disease. Viewers were urged to watch for the symptoms: restlessness, fatigue, irritability, muscle tension, nausea, diarrhea, and sweating, among others. Many of the segments featured sound bites from Sonja Burkett, a patient who'd finally received treatment after two years trapped at home by the illness, and from Dr. Jack Gorman, an esteemed psychiatrist at Columbia University. Their testimonials were intercut with peaceful images of a woman playing with a bird, and another woman taking pills.

The disease was generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), a condition that, according to the reports, left sufferers paralyzed with irrational fears. Mental-health advocates called it "the forgotten illness." Print periodicals were awash in stories of young women plagued by worries over money and men. "Everything took 10 times more effort for me than it did for anyone else," one woman told the Chicago Tribune. "The thing about GAD is that worry can be a full-time job. So if you add that up with what I was doing, which was being a full-time achiever, I was exhausted, constantly exhausted."

The timing of the media frenzy was no accident. On April 16, 2001, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved the antidepressant Paxil, made by British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, for the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder. But GAD was a little-known ailment; according to a 1989 study, as few as 1.2 percent of the population merited the diagnosis in any given year. If GlaxoSmithKline hoped to capitalize on Paxil's new indication, it would have to raise GAD's profile.

posted by Robert Heard at 10:09 AM