Big Pharma has a pill to solve all your problems. This is especially true for mental illness. Awareness of conditions such as anxiety and bipolar disorder has skyrocketed recently, and the pharmaceutical industry has seized on the opportunity to capitalize on this trend. But has the medical industry been cheated and over-billified their patient population? Overpill examines this pressing issue that affects the lives of millions.
The film introduces us to several ordinary people who are struggling with issues related to mental health, drug addiction and severe uncertainty about their future.
A surfer named Matt took a powerful acne medication before he was a teenager. One of the drug’s most intrusive side effects is the onset of major depressive disorder. He soon developed a strong suspicion of the pharmaceutical industry, especially when it came to their liberal drug-based anesthesia of children. In his view, this approach often ignores the underlying issues these patients are grappling with and ends up only exacerbating their trauma.
Then there was Denis, a Russian citizen who had moved to New York hoping to find a lucrative career in advertising. He found steady work servicing the pharmaceutical industry and learned the tactics of corporate drug trafficking from the inside. After discovering a society awash with pills designed to cure many ailments he’d never heard of before, his conscience won’t allow him to remain silent.
From a mother who prescribes a box of psychiatric drugs to her child, to a man suffering from constant nervous tics and physical arousal from antidepressants, the film’s protagonists all paint a stark cautionary tale of a A greedy and willful breach of the Hippocratic oath by a health care industry that operates out of control.
The problem is systemic and unlikely to change unless there is opposition from within the industry. Overpill introduces us to one such voice, a psychiatrist who eschews toxic drugs in favor of thoughtful treatment. For him and many others who share the film’s point of view, human compassion and sound medical judgment remain ideals for successful treatment.
Directed by: Petr Timofeev, Aleksey Shabarov
