Psychiatric drugs
Apr. 8th, 2006 04:01 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
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"From 1987 until the present, we saw an increase in the number of mentally disabled people from 3.3 million people to 5.7 million people in the United States. In that time, our spending on psychiatric drugs increased to an amazing degree. Combined spending on antipsychotic drugs and antidepressants jumped from around $500 million in 1986 to nearly $20 billion in 2004. So we raise the question: Is the use of these drugs somehow actually fueling this increase in the number of the disabled mentally ill?
When you look at the research literature, you find a clear pattern of outcomes with all these drugs -- you see it with the antipsychotics, the antidepressants, the anti-anxiety drugs and the stimulants like Ritalin used to treat ADHD. All these drugs may curb a target symptom slightly more effectively than a placebo does for a short period of time, say six weeks. An antidepressant may ameliorate the symptoms of depression better than a placebo over the short term.
What you find with every class of these psychiatric drugs is a worsening of the target symptom of depression or psychosis or anxiety over the long term, compared to placebo-treated patients. So even on the target symptoms, there's greater chronicity and greater severity of symptoms. And you see a fairly significant percentage of patients where new and more severe psychiatric symptoms are triggered by the drug itself."
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When you look at the research literature, you find a clear pattern of outcomes with all these drugs -- you see it with the antipsychotics, the antidepressants, the anti-anxiety drugs and the stimulants like Ritalin used to treat ADHD. All these drugs may curb a target symptom slightly more effectively than a placebo does for a short period of time, say six weeks. An antidepressant may ameliorate the symptoms of depression better than a placebo over the short term.
What you find with every class of these psychiatric drugs is a worsening of the target symptom of depression or psychosis or anxiety over the long term, compared to placebo-treated patients. So even on the target symptoms, there's greater chronicity and greater severity of symptoms. And you see a fairly significant percentage of patients where new and more severe psychiatric symptoms are triggered by the drug itself."
Read the entire interview
(Ganked with thanks from this post on
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no subject
Date: 2006-04-09 03:08 am (UTC)issues of initiation, mourning and lifechanges. Some of the less industrialized societies
have ways of dealing with these issues. For example 'Borderline Personality' is far less
common in societies that have adult initiations. In our society one slides from being a
child to being an adult without anything truly marking them as a result they often feel
that they lack and identity. People like this, if they run into difficulties are often
labled 'Borderline'. Depression - especially in this Horrible example is the result of
a society that does not allow proper time for grieving. If one does not grieve properly
it comes back to haunt you years later. I posit that most less industrialized societies
understand this.
I would say that this society has sacrificed much of the neccesary heart-full rituals
to the expediant of the machine. Unlike many i do not find the use of most psychotropics
to be malicious, it is just the best that this society can offer. It is sad. Very sad
no subject
Date: 2006-04-09 03:55 am (UTC)For my friend, unfortunately when the chips were down, she reverted back to the sick standards of society that she'd been raised with, that said she was Bad and Weak for needing so much support while she grieved. Her own mother was pressuring her to take drugs because she wasn't 'over it' after only a month - one month, to be over the death of one's child! - and she bought into the whole "better to feel nothing" idea. It didn't help, though. She very effectively drugged herself into apathetic zombie-hood, couldn't work, finally had to sell her beautiful house and go live with relatives, and lost touch with all her friends, probably out of shame.
I do blame the doctors for that - they had no reason to think her depression was caused by hypothetical "chemical imbalances"; they knew perfectly well what was causing it, and yet they still pushed her into drug use. Maybe it wasn't malicious; maybe it was just negligent, but it was still wrong. And they do know better - hell, there's 20 years' worth of research, if they'd bother to look at it instead of just swallowing everything the drug-company reps tell them. As the interview makes clear, the bad effects of these drugs have been known all along.
I don't believe that drugs are the best this society can offer. The easiest, sure - toss the patient a prescription for the latest fix-everything pill, and if that doesn't fix anything, toss 'em a different prescription; it's much easier than trying to find out what's really wrong with them and what they need to really heal. Of course, it's also a violation of the Hippocratic Oath, but it doesn't seem like most doctors care too much about that any more.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-09 06:36 am (UTC)to keep functioning at my job. The sane thing to do is to leave, but i have a
companion who is disabled from several chronic illnesses and injuries.
I really have no one to fall back on, so i do what i have to do to keep on going.
It's not supposed to be this way.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-09 06:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-09 04:00 am (UTC)to the expediant of the machine. Unlike many i do not find the use of most psychotropics
to be malicious, it is just the best that this society can offer. It is sad. Very sad
That's pretty much how we feel, actually-- I mean, if someone walks into a therapist's office talking about anxiety because a family member is terminally ill and the response is to suggest Thorazine as a "mood stabilizer" (yes, this is a real example), that's a sign of something profoundly sick about the society that condones it. Where taking time off for grief is forbidden, because you have to get back into the rat race as soon as possible just to feed yourself and stay alive, and find some way to numb yourself out if that's what it takes to keep going; and get dismissed by a majority of society as a non-functional loser or a leech if you need someone else to help you along temporarily.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-09 06:27 am (UTC)told me to leave the corporate job that was killing me. We went to the mountains
and lived there for several wonderfull years.
Unfortunatly we had to leave those hills to go back to work. Again i want to
return to the mountains. Corporate life can be soul numbing. At my job it used
to be a custom to name servers after psych drugs - which tells a long sad story.
-- Catskillmarina
no subject
Date: 2006-04-09 06:52 am (UTC)I could stand maybe a month of corporate life before I was ready to gnaw my own foot off in order to escape from it. Seriously, I'd rather live in a box under a bridge and play pennywhistle for quarters than be in that kind of life - heh, not that they'd hire the likes of me anyway. So you have my fullest sympathy; it must be awfully hard.