America's Mental Health Industry Manufactures Illness for Profit and Enables a Culture of Victimhood
Source: Brooke Brandtjen. "America's Obsession With Mental Illness Is A Mental Illness." September 7, 2026. thefederalist.com
The Gist
The author argues that America doesn't have a real mental health crisis—instead, we have a fake crisis manufactured by an industry that profits from convincing people they're sick. She points to rising diagnosis rates, a documentary criticizing the field, and the Lindsay Clancy murder trial as evidence that claiming mental illness has become an excuse for bad behavior and a lucrative business for doctors and pharmaceutical companies.
Conclusion
America's cultural obsession with mental illness is largely artificial and harmful, driven by a predatory mental health industry that profits from expanding diagnoses and encouraging people to build identities around perceived illness, ultimately eroding personal accountability.
Premises
- The definition of mental illness has expanded dramatically over time, with the DSM growing from about 100 disorders to over 300, including dubious new categories like 'prolonged grief disorder'
- Mental health diagnoses and spending have increased enormously in ways disproportionate to actual severe illness, with 72% of Gen Z believing they have a mental illness and industry spending projected to reach $159 billion by 2030
- The mental health and pharmaceutical industries have financial incentives to diagnose more people as ill, including pushing children toward costly and irreversible transgender medical procedures
- Public sympathy for 'mental illness' has created a victimhood culture that excuses harmful or erratic behavior, as seen in social media glamorization of mental illness and celebrity/influencer culture
- The Lindsay Clancy case demonstrates how claims of mental illness (temporary psychosis) are being used to excuse horrific crimes like child murder, garnering public sympathy for the perpetrator
- Historical data shows a shift from strict inpatient care for severe illness to broad, loosely-defined diagnoses affecting the general population
Assumptions
- An increase in diagnosed mental illness necessarily indicates over-diagnosis rather than improved awareness, reduced stigma, or better detection of previously unrecognized conditions
- Financial profitability of an industry is sufficient evidence that the underlying conditions it treats are largely fabricated or exaggerated
- Sympathy or understanding for someone's mental state does not negate moral responsibility for their actions
- Transgender identity and gender dysphoria are illegitimate medical/psychological phenomena rather than valid conditions
- The DSM's expansion of diagnostic categories reflects illegitimate pathologizing of normal behavior rather than legitimate clinical refinement
- Personal identity formation around a mental health diagnosis is inherently harmful rather than potentially adaptive or clarifying