India is afflicted by a boom in depression. A mind-boggling 56 million of its people have the condition, another 38 million have an anxiety disorder. It was among India’s top 15 causes of early death in 2019. Not surprisingly, antidepressants are rife: prescriptions grew by 23 percent over the last year.
In Japan, pharmaceutical companies coined the term ‘kokoro no kaze’, meaning ‘a cold of the soul’, for depression. This carefully crafted disease awareness campaign was behind a growing acceptance of depression and antidepressants to treat it, according to Professor Hiroshi Ihara. In India, interviews with medical professionals, clinical psychologists and even traditional healers show how the pharmaceutical industry is adopting new measures in an attempt to grow its market.
Doctors have described how pharmaceutical companies keep prescription records and in many cases pay doctors a percentage of the value of prescriptions, “If someone writes a prescription of 100 rupees, he gets 10 rupees; the amount is added …[and] paid through conference sponsorships, foreign trips, books and gifts,” said Prabir*, a clinical psychologist.
