TDAH e Complexo Médico-Industrial: revisão narrativa sobre uma epidemia lucrativa

Abstract

The use of psychiatric diagnoses has reached such a social importance that the current scenario points to a constant risk of various epidemics of mental disorders. Hence, this study aimed to understand the complex dynamics of forces that build the path for a condition of life to become a medical problem and, subsequently, an epidemic. For this purpose, through a narrative review, this research recognized the multiple aspects of the medicalization of life; the dynamics of a Medical-Industrial and Financial Complex; and the epidemic of psychiatric diagnoses. The study also looked at the historical-social evolution of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) as a means to identify the inter-influences involved in the consolidation of its diagnosis, which has become exponentially more recurrent nowadays. In addition, the study examined SciELO, PubMed, MEDLINE, MeSH, and Google Scholar databases to determine the evolution of the production and consumption of the main drugs prescribed for the treatment of ADHD, in order to investigate the possible socioeconomic repercussions of ADHD diagnostic inflation. With this, this work has found that the alternation of the protagonism among the actors that compose the health field is currently defined by the market, and, associated with the fluidity of psychiatric diagnoses, the influences of such forces have become determinant in the way a disorder is introduced, modified and/or expanded in the social environment. Moreover, the research showed that psychiatric disorders have become increasingly likely to become epidemic conditions, especially for the following reasons: the successive changes in their criteria, which allowed the expansion of the target audience of the diagnoses; the chronification of mental health practices, influenced by the strong reductionist movement of human suffering to biomedical logic; and the primacy of pharmacotherapy, perpetuated through a model of managed care that focuses on ​​cost reduction and increasing profits with the care.