I really think it's a money making scheme.
It's not. Profit does drive the pharmaceutial industry, but it's not a scheme by any means. The repercussions from something that fails is vast, so they must be extremely careful on what ends up on the market. Even something as wildly successful as
statin drugs have come under
new scrutiny very recently. This is not to say that pharmaceutical companies have exploited studies to gain a product, but it's not a systemic problem. A major failure with this can ruin a company completely.
I'm working on a PhD in organic chemistry, so I am pretty aware of what goes on in this area. I'd say there is a 50:50 shot I'll end up in the pharmaceutical industry. I'd rather not, but I'd make myself happy if I do. I've met several scientists who work in the field and listened to a number of talks from them. By and large, profit is needed to fund the industry itself, not to line the pockets of CEO's to the level that many would think. Simply put; science is freaking expensive. Chemicals cost a lot of money. Luckily, the return for a product is usually vast; pretty much every science is like that. Pharmaceuticals gets targeted for that reason. The massive profit they make, combined with the extremely negative press from something failed makes them seem quite evil, akin to a dirty wall street bank.
As far as psychiatric drugs, the nature of them is due to our limited understanding of how the brain actually works. One of the hopes of the BRAIN inititavie is to give a better understanding of how to address mental disorder. Currently, our understanding of psychiatric medications is mostly a series of observed connections. A drug effects levels of a neurotransmitter en masse by binding to a receptor that controls it. This is done broad across all regions where these receptors are present. Because genetics control how these are expressed, and in what quantity, it's sort of a crap shoot on figuring out what exactly will work. It's unfortunate, but medications have to be tried most of the time to find out what works, and even then some might not even work, or make things far worse. As of now it's all we got. This is why psychiatrist can seem really pill pushy. They aren't doing it to make a profit, they're doing it to solve a problem, and this is how it has to be done sadly.
If you have any questions in regard to this sort of stuff feel free to ask.