Opinion: Flooding the world with psychiatric drugs could boost the burden of mental disorders

To reduce the rising burden of mental disorders around the world, the Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health and Sustainable Development has declared a need to increase psychiatric services globally, which should include an effort to “reduce the cost and improve the supply of effective psychotropic drugs for mental, neurological, and substance use disorders.”

While reducing the burden of mental disorders is certainly a laudable goal, we believe that implementing this plan will increase the global burden of mental disorders rather than decrease it.

Following the American Psychiatric Association’s publication of the third edition of its “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual” (DSM III) in 1980, there has been a remarkable expansion of the psychiatric enterprise in the United States and other developed countries. That expansion, which included