The American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has recently ballooned in size to include “an ever-growing list of exotic mental disorders”, which, say some observers, caters to the interests of “a pharmaceutical industry that already encourages over-prescribing. Added to the list of mental disorders are a “persistent difficulty parting with possessions”; Hypersexual Disorder (aka sex addiction); Internet Disorder (computer addiction); and Binge Eating Disorder, defined as eating to excess more than 12 times in three months. On that basis, it looks like millions more people “may soon be classed among the 48 million Americans the APA already considers mentally ill. (Edited version of an article by Lizzie Crocker in The Daily Beast).

This is ridiculous and damaging manipulation of the public to extract even more money from the public. If you can’t sleep, what do they prescribe? Strong anti- depressants that make you acutely anxious. You then need ant-anxiety pills. Long ago the US congress, paid by the pharmaceutical companies, decreed that advertising these drugs on TV was o.k. Now doctors have no choice but to write prescriptions for expensive drugs as demanded by their patients.

If Epicureanism seeks to reduce fear and anxiety then it is in direct conflict with the vested interests of Big Pharma, ever inventing new “mental disorders” to make money. This is indecent, immoral and unconscionable. We should rebel. I personally will only take these drugs with my arm twisted up my back.