Feeling Intense Emotions Doesn’t Make You Crazy — But That’s Not What Big Pharma Wants You to Think byby Allegra Kirkland

"In 2014, a great deal of ink was spilled about the need to stop calling women crazy. Though dismissing women as emotional and irrational is hardly a new phenomenon, a Washington Post op-ed by dating coach Harris O’Malley provided the fodder for a thousand blog posts on the subject. As O’Malley writes, “It’s a form of gaslighting — telling women that their feelings are just wrong, that they don’t have the right to feel the way they do.”

Snippet of interview with Julie Holland

AK: There’s a long history of women being medicated and even institutionalized for invented illnesses like hysteria and frigidity. Do you see the high rates of psychiatric drug prescriptions for women as part of that historical continuum or is this something new?
JH: What I’m starting to see more and more are these ads. There are great websites for ads from the ‘50s and ‘60s, not just targeting women. Remember at that time Big Pharma could only advertise to doctors. So they’re advertising to doctors basically saying, If this patient is calling you too much and bugging you, here’s a medicine that will get her to stop.
The ads now feature everyday women with everyday problems. First of all, there was 9/11, and there’s no question that led to an increase in money spent on advertising, targeting women who were scared, who are having a normal response to an unnatural event. The ads were completely targeting them. There was one that just read, “Millions can be helped by Paxil.”

See her entire interview @ Reset.Me