Just some shit on psychiatry I could have posted before

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2011/06/23/epidemic-mental-illness-why/
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2011/07/14/illusions-of-psychiatry/

I read these brilliant 2011 articles by Marcia Angell ages ago (after hearing about them from Peter Hitchens, of all people (incidentally, I find that guy funny and I agree with him sorta on like a couple of things (his distaste for the so-called "Trotskyist elites"/"Blairites" is a distaste I share (though it is bizarre that he seriously advocates the view that the liberal elites I call neolibs are 'Trotskyists'), and his support of marriage and opposition to libertinism (his view, e.g., that the taking of dangerous drugs is immoral in itself  because "No man is an island") is an authentic-conservative social attitude which I personally believe is defensible (I suspect that the pan-civilisational institutions of marriage and monogamy are socially and culturally 'adaptive', which may help explain why they are pan-civilisational (keeping men 'in check' sort of thing)) but, generally speaking, I think he's profoundly irrational and kooky)), but they really intrigued and disturbed me and so I'm now posting them on here. I usually post links on my Facebook pages, but I figure that, seeing as I'm going to finish an essay on the philosophy of mental illness probably within the next two months and publish it here, here is a good place to post these links on the psychiatric business and the dubious efficacy of psychiatric medicines.
The short summary of Angell's analysis, derived from the analysis of the experts whose books she reviews, is, more or less, this: Big Pharma is a thing, man! The profit motive of pharmaceutical corporations seems to have had an inordinate effect on our understanding of mental illness, and thereby led to an increase in mental illness diagnosed, for which medications have been prescribed, some of which don't definitely work for anyone (there are apparently some disturbing publication biases operating in the process of confirming these meds as efficacious), and all of which have side-effects. Well, you know, it sounds a bit far left, but I can be a bit like that sometimes (actually, as I just made clear, Peter Hitchens agrees with this shit; the only kind of person who would be triggered by this conclusion would be a... BLAIRITE).