Making a Killing: The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging (2008)
Psychotropic drugs. It’s the story of big money-drugs that fuel a $330 billion psychiatric industry, without a single cure. The cost in human terms is even greater-these drugs now kill an estimated 42,000 people every year. And the death count keeps rising. Containing more than 175 interviews with lawyers, mental health experts, the families of victims and the survivors themselves, this riveting documentary rips the mask off psychotropic drugging and exposes a brutal but well-entrenched money-making machine. Before these drugs were introduced in the market, people who had these conditions would not have been given any drugs at all. So it is the branding of a disease and it is the branding of a drug for a treatment of a disease that did not exist before the industry made the disease.
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I'm really at odds with myself about this documentary. On the one hand it really points out how irresponsible the pharma lobbies uses it's power to exploit the people. On the other hand does it downplay the actual mental problems people have (e.g. there is no such thing as a bipolar disorder and depression- everyone has it sometimes...). Most disappointing is the sensational style of the documentation. You wouldn't have needed all these visual and audible effects to reach the audience. In the end I'm none the wiser. That's very unfortunate because this topic really needs to be illuminated so that treatments focus on nutrition, therapy (e.g. psycho- therapy) and systemic approaches (e.g. analyzing social patterns)
This is a must watch in our current world. Most people simply don't have the where-with-all to question a doctor, when they most certainly should. Drugs for mental illnesses is a supremely important issue that a lot of us face today. The sheer number of people that these drugs kill and severely hamper the lives of each year is staggering.Making a killing covers a lot of ground, and is absorbing the whole way through.Question everything: especially religion, government and your parents.
If I could give this film a zero out of 10, I would. I'm betting the two good reviews it got here were from Scientologists, considering that they produced this crap. I don't think psychiatry is without its faults, and I think the rest of the medical profession needs to demand more accountability from psychiatry and that hard data from repeatable research will, over time, determine which psychiatric treatments work and which don't. But I want data on that, and NOT from scientologists or their supporters! They're nutcases, and their assertions are neither plausible nor backed up by peer reviewed research. This is a jeremiad riddled with assertions, nothing more, and richly deserves contempt. But it certainly doesn't deserve your time or any of your money.
I found this documentary to be extremely informative and important in today's world, what with the flood of drug advertising hitting us daily in the media. There are so many new diseases and disorders it makes one think our doctors have been doing some great research and finding new diseases, and coming up with just the right pill for them...but this is NOT the case. Watch this documentary and find out the real reasons we're seeing so many new disorders and their treatments. It has nothing to do with science nor medicine! If you suffer from depression you would be better off talking with a friend or a clergyman than taking a prescription, psychotropic drug for it. Everyone should get very familiar with this important documentary.