The PLoS Medicine Disease Mongering Collection has for been available for downloading since it was published in 2006. Its makers explain:
To mark the first academic meeting on disease mongering (the “selling of sickness” in order to promote drug sales), which was held in Newcastle, Australia in April 2006, and to help provoke and inform a response to the phenomenon, PLoS Medicine commissioned a special theme issue. The Inaugural Conference on Disease Mongering was held between April 11-13, 2006 in Newcastle, Australia.
There’s further news on that front. HealthNewsReview.org explains:
The editors of the journal PLoS Medicine today published an editorial, “The Paradox of Mental Health: Over-Treatment and Under-Recognition.” Excerpts:
“On the one hand is over-treatment and over-medicalization of mental health issues, often fueled by a pharmaceutical industry interested in the broadening of the boundaries of “illness” and in the creation of more and wider diagnostic categories and thus markets for “selling sickness.” On the other hand exists profound under-recognition of the suffering and breadth of mental health issues affecting millions of people across geographies, which is a global problem….