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In 1992, when Paxil hit the market, it faced a seemingly uphill battle to wrest customers from older SSRIs such as Prozac and Zoloft. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had approved Paxil for the treatment of depression, like those drugs. But its manufacturer, SmithKline Beecham (because of a 2001 merger, now GlaxoSmithKline), was more interested in positioning Paxil as a remedy for anxiety disorders…

The company quickly secured permission to market Paxil for the treatment of panic disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. By mid-1995, Paxil had become the fastest-growing SSRI in the United States. In 1996, sales of the drug had climbed 54 percent to $291 million.

Impressive though those numbers may be, SmithKline was on the verge of a much bigger marketing coup: The company had been working to win approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to market Paxil as a treatment for the first of a series of little-known mental health ills. In 1999, the FDA agreed to allow Paxil's prescription for the previously rare "social anxiety disorder."

SmithKline hired a New York public relations firm to raise awareness about the syndrome. According to the trade journal PR News, Cohn & Wolfe "developed a plan to educate reporters, consumers, and, in some cases, physicians, in an effort to encourage diagnosis and treatment."

All indications are that the agency earned its fee. "Paxil's reintroduction secured nearly 1.1 billion media impressions in 1999, with 400 million generated in the month that the drug was granted FDA approval," raved PR News. "Media highlights included the cover of U.S. News and World Report, The Howard Stern Show, Parade, National Examiner, the New York Times, Good Morning America, and Vogue. Ninety-six percent of media coverage delivered the key message, 'Paxil is the first and only FDA-approved medication for the treatment of social anxiety disorder.'"

– Paxil is Forever by Beth Hawkins, 16 October 2002.

There is a close relationship between the drug companies and the psychiatric establishment. While it may not be the intention, the establishment explanation of the causes of and solutions to schizophrenia are crucial components in the process of selling drugs. If patients can be persuaded their illness is an unchangeable genetic destiny and that it is a physical problem requiring a physical solution, drug companies' profits will grow.

– Think again by Oliver James, 22 October 2005.

In October, 2004, after taking TeenScreen, a 10-minute computer test developed in the psychiatric department of Columbia University, 16-year-old Chelsea Rhoades of Indiana was told she had two mental health problems, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and social anxiety disorder. The diagnoses were based upon Chelsea's responses that she liked to help clean the house and didn't "party" much… TeenScreen is designed only to increase psychiatric and drug company revenues by turning normal children into lifelong mental patients. Now is the time for anyone who cares about children and the future to step up and demand that mental health screening not be allowed in any schools at any time.

– Inside TeenScreen by Sandra Lucas, 30 December 2005.

The cruel contradictions of corporate medicine were described matter-of-factly in the New York Times's Jan. 9-12 series on diabetes. Hospitals lose money educating patients on how to control the disease and make money on amputations and other procedures required as the disease worsens. One in eight adult New Yorkers now suffers from diabetes, as do some 21 million Americans.

– "Metabolic Syndrome" is to "Clinical Depression" as Acomplia is Prozac by Fred Gardner, 21 January 2006.