Psychopharmacology

“Although there are clearly psychobiological inputs to many psychiatric disorders, we are at present in a state where companies can not only seek to find the key to the lock but can dictate a great deal of the shape of the lock to which a key must fit. . . . In purist circles there will be great resistance to the idea that one can create reality by marketing efforts. It can be argued, however, that it was ever thus. . . . Indeed in psychiatry, at least, a good case can be made that astute marketing extends right into the heart of academe itself. In psychopharmacology, the ideas that have caught on have done so because their originators have had a talent for coining a pithy title to describe a phenomenon – such as Type I and Type II schizophrenia or the amine hypothesis of depression. . . any consideration of the development of psychopharmacology makes it quite clear that good marketing of such ideas can capture a field, either before the evidence is in on an issue or even in the face of considerable contradictory evidence” (Healy, 212, 213).