In this revealing interview, psychologist and critic Bruce Levine pulls back the curtain on psychiatry’s unholy alliance with pharmaceutical interests. He describes how Big Pharma’s funding of the APA, NAMI, academic departments, and “thought leaders” has manufactured the illusion of a legitimate medical authority peddling “safe and effective” drugs. In reality, psychiatry offers neither science nor cures—just symptom suppression and lifelong customers.
Levine highlights one of the most disturbing trends: the medicalization of normal childhood behavior. Diagnoses like Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) pathologize ordinary rebellion, resistance, and non-compliance. Archives of General Psychiatry data he cites show a sevenfold increase in antipsychotic use among children under 13, with 63% of these heavily tranquilized kids having no psychotic condition—only disruptive behavior labels. These children are not “ill”; they are being chemically coerced into fitting narrower societal expectations.
Even more damning is Levine’s documentation of establishment insiders turning against the system. Former NIMH director Thomas Insel rejected the DSM for research. DSM-IV task force chair Allen Frances and DSM-III chair Robert Spitzer have publicly expressed embarrassment at psychiatry’s diagnostic imperialism, the removal of context, and the creation of invalid, unreliable categories. The biochemical imbalance theory—once the cornerstone sales pitch for SSRIs—is now admitted by mainstream voices like Ronald Pies to be little more than an “urban legend.” Antidepressants perform no better than placebo in aggregate, yet the drugs flow.
Levine’s message is clear and urgent: psychiatry’s legitimacy is collapsing under its own lack of science, while its cultural power—fueled by profit—continues to expand. Normal human distress and developmental phases are being turned into chronic “disorders” requiring expensive, side-effect-laden chemicals. This interview is essential viewing for anyone still trusting institutional psychiatry. It perfectly illustrates why Per Lanterna exists: to shine a lantern into these dark corners and expose the corruption Diogenes would have relished unmasking.
Highly recommended. Watch and share widely.
4. ‘Mental health’ is defined and controlled by profit-driven commercial interests
