Do you get bored when reading a boring book? Do you struggle to concentrate when you haven’t had enough sleep? Do you have difficulty following instructions, make careless mistakes and forget to return calls? Are you sometimes the last one to “get” a joke?
You may be “suffering from” with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and are “neurodivergent” and “on the spectrum.”
Today’s ASD “neurodivergence” craze has spawned at least two lucrative and glossy newsstand magazines, millions of new “identities” (therapies, job and school “accommodations,” support groups) and of course expensive meds. Like “adult ADHD” before it, an ASD diagnosis can’t be confirmed by lab and blood tests, is often self-diagnosed and confers an instant identity and a sense of belonging to “sufferers.” The diagnosis adds antidepressant and antipsychotic drug revenues to the stimulant revenue that mere adult ADHD created years ago, a financial trifecta.
As early as 2008, before the ASD craze, a press release aimed at drugmakers read, “Immature adult market continues to offer greatest commercial potential. Estimated to be twice the size of the pediatric ADHD population, the highly prevalent, yet largely untapped, adult ADHD population continues to represent an attractive niche to target.” The next year, McNeil sponsored a Facebook page called “ADHD Allies: A Place for Adults with ADHD,” which mentioned no ADHD drugs but provided a link to an online ADHD self-assessment questionnaire, advising people to “Take this test and discuss your answers with your health care professional.”
In 2009, one drugmaker launched a Nationwide Adult ADHD Mobile Awareness Tour, which included a “mobile screening initiative” called the RoADHD Trip. The caravan, anchored by “the RoADHD Trip Tractor Trailer,” which turned into a tented area with eight “self-screening stations,” traveled the country, visiting major cities such as Chicago, Indianapolis, and Dallas. In each city, the company said it was partnering with the Attention Deficit Disorder Association, “a leading adult ADHD patient advocacy organization, in an effort to assist up to 20,000 adults to self-screen for this disorder.”
Outdoor advertising was employed. “Pedestrians mulling around Times Square in New York City can learn more about ADHD by responding to an advertisement on the CBS jumbotron, via text message,” reported an article in Medical Marketing & Media.
The TV newsmagazine 60 Minutes reported in 2010 that 34 percent of undergraduates had taken ADHD drugs without a prescription with 50-60 percent of juniors and seniors taking them. Few remembered, thanks to the Pharma marketing, that before the ADHD gold rush, everyone from truck drivers to factory workers to harried mothers to athletes took stimulants. Not because they had a mental disease but because stimulants simply provided concentration, focus, and stamina to do uninteresting work, and they still do. Why else do parents so often avail themselves of their kids’ meds? Who remembers “meth?”
Pathologizing normal
Drugmakers redefining human distraction, boredom, disinterest, and fatigue as a mental disease is a replica of how a blue day, bad job or unhappy marriage have been defined as “depression” and a “chemical imbalance” since the 1980s. Today, 30.8 million American take antidepressants. The popular SSRI antidepressants may even contribute to the current “bipolar” epidemic according to some research.
When direct-to-consumer and unbranded drug advertising debuted 25 years ago, drugmakers discovered amazing marketing lucre: People like to have diseases, they like to take medication and they like to be health victims. It gives them an identity and a “journey.” Human hypochondria, especially in the U.S., is so immanent drugmakers discovered, all the ads have to say “you might be at risk for” and “get screened.” Of course, patient front groups, websites, “free screenings,” and Times Square ads help.
Sadly, when reporters expose drugmakers’ shameless hyping and even creating of “diseases” to sell drugs, they provoke backlashes from patients who “really” have the advertised conditions and resent the exposes. Pharma thanks them.
Martha Rosenberg is a health reporter and the author of Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Lies and Born With a Junk Food Deficiency.
