One in five Americans, along with millions of children, are prescribed psychiatric drugs daily, and often for a lifetime. MEDICATING NORMAL follows the stories of five high-functioning people whose doctors prescribed pills to help with common problems such as stress, mild depression, insomnia and grief with devastating impact on their lives. This is the untold story of the serious consequences that can occur when profit-driven medicine intersects with human beings in distress.
“Medicating Normal dares to challenge prevailing myths about how psychotropic medications work, or fail to, in our ongoing struggle to treat mental illness. It promises to spark a long-overdue national conversation on the growing problem of overprescribing.” -Anna Lembke, MD, Associate Professor, Stanford University Medical Center
“This film should be seen by anyone interested in psychiatric care in our society. It powerfully tells of how we have organized our thinking and care around a pro-pharma marketing story, rather than good science, and how that is doing great harm.”—Robert Whitaker, science journalist and author of Anatomy of an Epidemic
“I think it’s a terribly important movie” -Bessel van der Kolk, MD