Medicalization is the process by which non–medical problems, such as normal life events, become defined and treated as medical problems, usually as illnesses or disorders.
For some time there has been growing concern that the medicalization of behavior is a principal driver of increased health care costs in the mental health care industry. The medicalization of unhappiness, for example, is a driver for the prescription of harmful antidepressant drugs.
Peter Conrad, a sociologist at Brandeis University, and his team have published a recent paper in which they estimate the costs of medicalization [“Estimating the costs of medicalization” Social Science & Medicine, Volume 70, Issue 12, June 2010, Pages 1943-1947].
The paper estimates direct costs associated with twelve medicalized conditions (including ADHD, sadness, anxiety and behavioral disorders) in the U.S. at approximately $77 billion in 2005, which was 3.9% of the total domestic expenditures on health care. This amounts to about $256 per person for the current U.S. population of roughly 300 million.
Conrad is quoted as saying, “We spend more on these medicalized conditions than on cancer, heart disease, or public health.” [Science Daily]
Certainly one of the primary culprits of mental health medicalization is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) which is currently being revised to include even more medicalized behavioral disorders, for which more harmful drugs can be prescribed.