{"id":2599489,"date":"2026-05-06T13:25:02","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T17:25:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-american-medical-establishment-didnt-discover-a-mental-health-crisis-it-created-one\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T13:31:36","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T17:31:36","slug":"the-american-medical-establishment-didnt-discover-a-mental-health-crisis-it-created-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-american-medical-establishment-didnt-discover-a-mental-health-crisis-it-created-one\/","title":{"rendered":"American Medical Establishment Created The Mental Health Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthe-american-medical-establishment-didnt-discover-a-mental-health-crisis-it-created-one%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2599489&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>the article argues that the U.S. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/nicole-gelinas-nyc-murders-are-down-but-not-for-women-and-girls\/\" title=\"Nicole Gelinas: NYC Murders Are Down \u2014 But Not for Women and Girls\">mental-health system<\/a> has increasingly medicalized ordinary behaviors and distress, resulting in widespread overdiagnosis and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/bidens-executive-actions-on-critical-minerals-are-empty-symbolism-critics-say\/\" title=\"Biden\u2019s Executive Actions On Critical Minerals Are Empty Symbolism, Critics Say\">long-term reliance<\/a> on psychiatric drugs that may worsen outcomes for many people. It claims that while depression and sadness are widely reported and prescription use is high,the \u201cmental health crisis\u201d might potentially be partly driven by how society defines mental illness and the incentives that encourage medication.<\/p>\n<p>Speakers at the MAHA Institute\u2019s Mental Health and Overmedicalization Summit contend that medical and psychiatric professionals have reframed normal human experiences-such as sadness, childhood misbehavior, moral dilemmas, or \u201cdevelopmental challenges\u201d-as medical problems requiring treatment. The piece points to changes in diagnostic practice, especially the DSM-III (1968), which it says added many new diagnoses and helped make a large share of the population eligible for treatment. It further argues that many disorders lack solid physiological evidence, and it criticizes popular claims like \u201cchemical imbalance,\u201d highlighting the history of Prozac\u2019s marketing and noting that the theory has largely been discredited yet remains culturally influential.<\/p>\n<p>It also claims schools function as a pipeline for identifying and labeling children as needing treatment. The article cites mental-health screening practices (<a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >including suicide-related questions reportedly posed<\/a> to children as young as eight), argues that many \u201cat risk\u201d identifications are actually normal, and says programs like TeenScreen have high false-positive rates and are linked to pharmaceutical funding. ADHD is described as a \u201cgateway\u201d diagnosis leading to medication for children, with the piece using Hampton Roads, Virginia as an example of how stopping or reducing drugging was associated with better educational and disciplinary outcomes.<\/p>\n<p>it argues that psychiatric medications may suppress symptoms temporarily but are rarely effective long-term, with withdrawal symptoms often mislabeled as relapse-leading to ongoing or escalating prescribing (including a \u201cprescribing cascade\u201d where new meds are used to manage side effects). The article concludes that drug efficacy testing and clinical assumptions may structurally favor continued long-term use, and it portrays withdrawal as an exploited factor in practice.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2014 The American medical establishment has been working for over 100 years to fabricate a mental health crisis, but with contemporary perceptions of depression and sadness at <a href=\"https:\/\/news.gallup.com\/poll\/694199\/u.s.-depression-rate-remains-historically-high.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">all-time highs<\/a>, coupled with prescription drug use run rampant, they may have created a real one.<\/p>\n<p>An enormous amount of Americans are diagnosed with some form of <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2026\/05\/05\/rfk-launches-plan-to-stop-predatory-overprescribing-of-psych-drugs\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">mental illness<\/a>, invariably leading them to be prescribed intense regimens of drugs that manufacturers and doctors claim will resolve the issues.<\/p>\n<p>However, as many experts at the MAHA Institute\u2019s Mental Health and Overmedicalization Summit on Monday noted, outcomes for long-term use of common medications like Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) or benzodiazepines, are often more negative than the underlying reason patients were given them in the first place: increased suicidal ideation, more intense depression, a strong correlation with tendency toward violence (e.g. school shooters), and much more.<\/p>\n<p>As Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2026\/05\/05\/rfk-launches-plan-to-stop-predatory-overprescribing-of-psych-drugs\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">said<\/a> in his keynote address to the summit, a huge portion of Americans of all age groups are systematically placed on psychological drugs, while there is very little proven efficacy of such drugs, particularly over long periods. <\/p>\n<p>But the job of some panelists at the summit was to find out how exactly American society got to the place where its populace was both overmedicalized and much worse off in terms of mental health outcomes. <\/p>\n<p>One explanation became exceedingly clear: The American medical establishment has been attempting to describe the norms of human existence in highly medical and scientific terms, declaring that typical things like occasional sadness or rambunctiousness in young boys at school is actually a mental health concern or brain chemical imbalance.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Human Existence As Mental Illness<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>\u201cWe were bootlegging humanism,\u201d David Cohen, Professor of Social Welfare and Associate Dean at the University of California, Los Angeles Luskin School for Public Affairs, who <a href=\"https:\/\/luskin.ucla.edu\/person\/david-cohen\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">specializes<\/a> in the study of \u201cpsychoactive drugs across shifting boundaries of medical, recreational, and illicit uses,\u201d said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey medicalize every challenge of human existence \u2026 every struggle, every developmental challenge, every moral dilemma, every obsession, every distraction, every misbehavior became a mental health concern to be treated by mental health professionals,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were promoting sort of a technical fix to continue managing more social, legal, moral, ethical, religious problems in a different way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The push to start medicalizing mental health has been ongoing for the past 120 years, Cohen said, where at one point there was a concern for the small group of people who were being sent to asylums, but now the mental health crisis has reached epidemic levels. The \u201csociopolitical psycho-bio, industrial medical complex\u201d he said, includes about two million medical professionals dedicated to identifying, diagnosing, and treating (mostly with drugs) the American populace.<\/p>\n<p>Probably the largest turning point in that time happened in 1968 with the introduction of the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-3). The DSM-3 \u201cdropped on the doorstep over 100 refurbished or brand new diagnoses,\u201d including Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), Borderline Personality Disorder, and Panic Disorder.<\/p>\n<p>Under the DSM framework, about 50 percent of the U.S. population meets criteria for lifetime diagnosis of a mental disorder, Cohen said, adding that 65 percent of adults in the U.S. in 2024 reported concerns with a family member\u2019s mental health, while 77 percent ranked mental health as a major concern \u201con par with the economy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe burgeoning mental health professions rushed in to join in that re-labeling of virtually everything that plagues us in life. But that scientific promise never materialized,\u201d Cohen said. \u201cForty-six years after DSM-3, not a single mental disorder in that book ever graduated to a general medical condition \u2014 not one. They still remain a species \u2014 a special species \u2014 of something medical \u2014 but not quite \u2014 that we can define any way we want, but it\u2019s still some medical problem. In other words, we know a mental disorder when we see it, but no one can tell you, \u2018What is it?&#8217;\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That is because there is little or no physiological evidence for many of these disorders.<\/p>\n<p>Jeffrey Lacasse, a professor at Florida State University specializing in mental health and psychiatric medications, explained that paired with the DSM-3 was the idea that mental disorders are a \u201cchemical imbalance in the brain.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Infamously, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Prozac in 1987, and it was marketed as such. However, Lacasse explained that there was no evidence to believe the \u201cchemical imbalance\u201d theory by the 1970s, and by the mid-2000s, the theory was dead and advertisements claiming the theory had largely disappeared.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the lack of evidence, Lacasse said 88 percent of the public still believe the theory.<\/p>\n<p>Cohen said it speaks to the \u201ctotal scientific failure, but astounding cultural success\u201d of convincing Americans to think in terms of mental illness, and particularly in terms of chemical imbalances in the brain.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWho doesn\u2019t know five diagnoses that you belong \u2014 friends, co-workers, family members, yourself, without any diagnostician? This thing is a complete part of the culture\u2026 Why? Because in America, the DSM has remained our only way to determine a person\u2019s eligibility for help,\u201d Cohen said. \u201cUsing public funds or third-party reimbursement during times of distress or misbehavior, asking for help, being a resident or a citizen just won\u2019t do it. We\u2019ve got to pronounce your problem as a disease or a medical problem before we respond to it with companionship, shelter, or drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Schools Are The Gateway To Drugging Children<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>As The Federalist <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2025\/03\/13\/exclusive-linda-mcmahon-meets-with-detransitioners-to-discuss-schools-pushing-gender-transition\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">reported<\/a>, schools often act as a pipeline convincing students that they are a different gender, and then encourage them to seek increasing levels of intervention \u2014 from social \u201ctransition,\u201d to chemical castration drugs, to genital mutilation surgeries.<\/p>\n<p>So, too, are they pathways to other forms of mental health medicalization in children.<\/p>\n<p>Gretchen Watson, a clinical psychologist, noted that universal mental health screenings are now happening in one-third of American schools, where children \u201cas young as eight\u201d are asked \u201cleading questions\u201d about suicide.<\/p>\n<p>Watson quoted them:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ol>\n<li>In the past few weeks, have you wished you were dead?<\/li>\n<li>In the past few weeks, have you felt that your you or your family would be better off if you were dead?<\/li>\n<li>In the past week, have you been having thoughts about killing yourself? <\/li>\n<li>Have you ever tried to kill yourself? If yes, how, when?<\/li>\n<li>Are you having thoughts of killing yourself right now? If yes, please describe.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The screenings include other questions, such as, \u201cHow often have you felt that you have something important to contribute to society?\u201d and \u201cWhat strategies have you found helpful in managing your mental health?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Watson noted how harmful and unhealthy it is to ask young children to think in those terms.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019ve got to wonder if these questions aren\u2019t planting confusing ideas in young children\u2019s minds, priming them for anxiety and depression,\u201d she said, adding that 90 percent of the children the screenings identify as \u201cat risk\u201d are actually normal. <\/p>\n<p>Some of the most prolific screening programs, such as TeenScreen used in 43 states, identify 84 percent false-positives and are funded by the pharmaceutical industry, Watson said, concerned with the ability to market mental illness to children.<\/p>\n<p>Watson identified Attention-Deficit\/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) as a \u201cgateway diagnosis that opened the door to the medicalization of childhood and to drug cocktails for young children.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She used Hampton Roads, Virginia, which she referred to as the \u201ccountry\u2019s first ADHD hot spot,\u201d as a case study in diagnosis, drugging children, and educational outcomes.<\/p>\n<p>There, in 1999, 19 percent of elementary students were diagnosed with ADHD, resulting in 84 percent of them being given drugs, 28 percent being given two or more drugs, and nine percent on three or more, simultaneously.<\/p>\n<p>Watson said that level of prescribing in children was \u201cunheard of\u201d at the time, and that the medicated children actually had worse educational outcomes than that of the ADHD-diagnosed children who were not medicated.<\/p>\n<p>That resulted in many in Hampton Roads, over the next four years, to stop the drugging. Watson said that ADHD diagnoses themselves reduced by 32 percent, as they implemented \u201cnon-drug interventions that were associated with educational improvements,\u201d resulting in \u201c70 percent reduction in discipline referrals, significant decreases in ADHD symptoms from the beginning to the end of the school year, and higher test scores on every subject of the statewide academic testing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, despite that four-year span of improvement, \u201cpsychiatric overtreatment has become a national crisis,\u201d including in Hampton Roads.<\/p>\n<p>Nationally, by 2015, over 40 percent of children and young adults between the ages of two and 24 were on multiple psychiatric drugs, with combinations including stimulants, antidepressants, and antipsychotics, Watson said.<\/p>\n<p>Hampton Roads, for its part, opened a psychiatric hospital in 2022 \u201cto contend with the continual uptick in psychiatric emergencies and police reports of mental violence among children treated for mental health problems,\u201d Watson said, adding, in 2023, a six-year-old on ADHD medications went to school with a gun and shot his teacher.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Designed To Fail<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>\u201cWhile psychiatric drugs can suppress certain behaviors over the short term, they are rarely effective long term,\u201d Watson said. <\/p>\n<p>But long-term use \u2014 over the span of months and years \u2014 is the norm in American society. That use builds dependence, which results in intense withdrawal symptoms when most patients try to ween themselves off the drugs.<\/p>\n<p>However, as Watson and Cohen pointed out, those withdrawal symptoms are not generally considered by clinicians as withdrawal \u2014 but rather, mental health relapse. In other words, doctors consider withdrawal symptoms to be a continuation or reemergence of the underlying issue that the patient was prescribed the drug to alleviate in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>Watson noted how doctors will start stacking medications on top of one another, stating, \u201cthis pattern of prescribing medication to treat the effects of other medications is known as the \u2018prescribing cascade,\u2019 and it accounts for a significant portion of children in this country who experience psychiatric emergencies.\u201d Drugs are seldom tested in combination with each other, let alone over long periods of time.<\/p>\n<p>Cohen added that the faux-relapse is actually a consideration built into the drugs themselves.<\/p>\n<p>Studies on these drugs are already short, but when testing for how patients do off the drugs, researchers will automatically assume that clear relapse symptoms are just illness regression, causing them to conclude that it is best to simply keep the patients on these drugs forever.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey know it could be withdrawal, they have instruments to measure withdrawal, but they always conclude, 90 percent of the time, it\u2019s relapse,\u201d he said. \u201cIn other words, it\u2019s central for the industry to continue to say that the drugs are useful because they use removing people from the drugs as a central feature.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cdarker side,\u201d he said, is that \u201cwithdrawal is exploited \u2026 in the clinic with your patient.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. As an investigative journalist, he previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US seeks to explain how mental-health crisis may be \u201cmanufactured\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":179,"featured_media":2599490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/pexels-timur-weber-8560843-scaled.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33651],"tags":[39633,79211,79210,35390,38835],"class_list":["post-2599489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-western-journal","tag-american-healthcare","tag-crisis-response-2","tag-medical-system","tag-mental-health","tag-public-policy"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/pexels-timur-weber-8560843-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2599489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/179"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2599489"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2599489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2599493,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2599489\/revisions\/2599493"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2599490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2599489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2599489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2599489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}