[identity profile] elenbarathi.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] multiplicity_archives
"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."

Read the entire interview

(Ganked with thanks from this post on [livejournal.com profile] alobar's Lj.)

Date: 2006-04-09 03:08 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] catskillmarina.livejournal.com
I'd say part of the problem with our society is that it has no real way to deal with
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

Date: 2006-04-09 06:36 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] catskillmarina.livejournal.com
Sadly, i have had to take anti-depressants - either st johnswort or wellbutrin
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.

Date: 2006-04-09 04:00 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sethrenn.livejournal.com
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


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.

Date: 2006-04-09 06:27 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] catskillmarina.livejournal.com
When my mother died i was lucky that my wife (we are both female bodied)
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

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