There is an interesting study out in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry that has concluded that the majority of people taking antidepressants may not actually have depression. The study found that more than two-thirds (69 per cent) of people taking antidepressants did not meet the criteria for major depressive disorder, or clinical depression.
Some 38 per cent of those taking the drugs did not meet the criteria for obsessive compulsive disorder, panic disorder, social phobia or generalised anxiety disorder either. More than two thirds of people taking antidepressants did not meet the criteria for clinical depression.
The researchers believe that doctors are prescribing the drugs without real “evidence-based indications.” Instead, it appears that people who are experiencing normal periods of blues or unhappiness are being put on these regimes. The official guidelines state that clinical depression should be diagnosed if a person has five or more depressive symptoms over a two week period. These periods are supposed to cover most of each day and nearly every day.
The United States is not the most medicated. That position belongs to Iceland with 106 doses a day for every 1,000 inhabitants — followed by Australia, Canada, Denmark, Sweden and Portugal. The lowest levels? Chile and South Korea.
Source: Daily Mail
“Maybe I am doing something right after all.”
Indeed.
I frequently see new patients who have been prescribed 15-25 medications somewhere.
I must be doing something wrong. I have never been given drugs, free or otherwise, directly by a doctor. Were does this phenomena occur? My doc’s all seem to be fussy and insist on prescribing only what thorough testing indicates is rational. And my PCP insists on reviewing my list of Rx’s annually, and won’t just re-issue them just because I’ve had them before. He also removes some Rx’s when tests indicate that course of action.
Maybe I am doing something right after all.
Aridog – my PCP has given me enough samples to cure a particular problem before. However, it is usually my specialists who give me handout to try to see if they work because they are not generics.
Prairie Rose
Exactly and if they work it is typically at the time. As the body changes, especially with children, the effects of the drug change. I taught ‘inner city’ kids who most of the time were a handful. Occasionally a kid would ‘flip out’. The counsellor’s observation more often than not was “He stopped taking his medicine.” When you added up all the factors for the anti-social, or however one wants to name it, behavior, it seems as if the drug was nothing more than the finger in the dike. Little to nothing was done to address all the factors that made the kid how it was: diet, lack of parental involvement, poorly trained teachers, overly administered system from too great a distance, etc.
The drug produces a big ‘AHHHH’ in the kid but more so in the system. The quick fix ends up being not such a great fix. What if the money that is being consumed by Big Pharma went to well trained practitioners instead? Nah, and give up the freedoms SCOTUS guarantees.
issac – it is clear that you do not understand ADHD. There are things they do that they have little or no control over. We do not have a social filter. If we think it, we say it. Ritilan slows the student down and helps them focus. We can be distracted by anything. And the hyperactivity drives the teachers crazy.
What I finally learned is that I marched to own orchestra. Screw the drummer!!!
Tin Ear,
“If a patient is depressed, the doctor doesn’t want to risk possible suicide; better to prescribe an antidepressant and hope it helps.”
Ironically, some anti-depressants can increase the risk of suicide in some populations.
I suppose it is time here to throw another log on the fire. The Supreme Court of the United States has probably more to do with the proliferation of drugs than any one thing. Now, don’t jump. There are many ‘things’.
The status given by the SCOTUS allowing corporations, industries, through lobbyists to PURCHASE our elected (sic) representatives is, without argument, a substantial element in the problem.
SCOTUS exists to protect the Constitution. Can the Constitution only mean what SCOTUS wants it to mean? Ask the oligarchs, they’ll tell ya.
issac – the Constitution means what the Supreme Court tells you it means. Not more, not less.
@DBQ
That is the way I was raised, too. Southern Baptists still believe in spanking. Plus, my father was in the Air Force, sooo he wasn’t exactly tuned in to a bunch of whining and slacking off.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
And DBQ and Squeeky are correct: Discipline has vanished.
Now a kid can change gender as often as they change their clothes.
Note that the big jump in medicating kids with psychoactive drugs happens at 6 years old, increasing from 0.1% to 5.1%.
Why?
Symptoms become more prominent at school; schools have an interest in medicating the problem: practically (calm the kid down) educationally (diminished expectations) and economically (schools get more funding.)
Pogo – the schools usually do not get more funding for an ADHD student. The reason you see the jump is that the teacher see activities that triggers them to recommend a Conner Scale be given to the child. This is done both at home and at school. It is scored by a professional. Then, if the score is high enough, it is suggested to the parents that the child be tested for ADHD. This has to be done by a professional, hopefully one who specializes in the area. Only after the professional says the child is ADHD is medication an option.
Going off their meds. This is very interesting. Ritilan is a 30 day scrip but you only get 12 scrips a year. So there are 5 days a year you are going to be off your meds. This could hit on a day you were at school. Then, course, you would be off the next school day, because you could not get it until after school. This may have changed. This was the pattern when I was teaching.
Squeeky. You are describing the way that MOST American children were raised up until recently when the helicopter parent and the overly involved overly cautious parent became the norm.
In the “olden” days, the parents set the rules, the children had chores and responsibilities and as long as they behaved, free time was theirs to play as they wanted. Free range kids.
If the children didn’t behave there were punishments. I don’t mean beatings. Punishments and consequences. Spanking. Being grounded. Toys and privileges taken away. The word NO was not unheard of.
Children were not the center of the family or the center of attention at all times.
I don’t recall ANY child that I was growing up with being medicated for any behavioral reason. I don’t recall any child being considered having attention deficit or any of the other multitudes of diagnoses that children are labeled with today.
DBQ – I never heard of ADHD students because it was not recognized when I was growing up. They were the ones who ended up in the principal’s office. I suggest a book for you. So I am not Lazy, Stupid, or Crazy. Every ADHD child has been called those thing by adults by parents, teachers, or some adult.
Now it is possible that the French genetically have fewer ADHD students. We do know there is a genetic component with ADHD and they could just be on the low end of the scale. Then again, if I use a different scale, I can have few ADHD students. I still have them, but they officially don’t exist.
What a surprise! (Not!) I wonder about all those Addleall and Ritalin scripts for supposedly ADD kids, too. For anybody who is interested:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/suffer-the-children/201203/why-french-kids-dont-have-adhd
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky – Psychology Today is the Huffington Post of the psychology community.
“The success of a drug should depend on whether or not it is effective”
How do you prove a drug “effectively treats” depression?
Uh oh.
Reblogged this on Scoop Feed.
@Darren Smith
“Is there an element in these prescription rates due to practitioners fearing liability for failing to provide an anti-depressant type med and the patient thereafter committing an act of self harm?”
This fits better with over-testing.
Over-prescribing of psychiatric medications seems multi-factorial:
Pharma, MDs, patients.
Technology, new med discoveries, insurance coverage of meds.
Ever-shorter office visits, patient demands, TV ads, medicalization of normal behavior.
MD payment by ICD-10 codes.
MDs doing something when doing nothing is better.
Patients believing something is better than nothing.
Probably not lawsuits; the biggest psych risk is suicide, and documentation generally absolves that risk.
Thanks Pogo
The success of a drug should depend on whether or not it is effective, not some idiot asking his doctor about it.
Exactly. The advertising on television is relentless. I have a doctor friend who is about to retire and he said whenever someone is in his examining room and begins with…”I saw about this drug on television and…..” He wants to hit himself over the head with a hammer.
Maybe the drug is applicable but if it isn’t there is not an easy way to explain to the patient that everything you see on the Teeee Veeeee is not true and may not apply to you.
Sometimes the only way to end the argument is to prescribe the drug as long as it won’t be harmful or disguise another condition.
I felt the same way in my practice when clients would talk about articles that they read or bring in those for subscription “newsletters” which were only about hawking a particular investment vehicle that were completely contrary to my advice and the plan that we had drawn up. I would often (gently and sometimes not so gently) fire those types of clients. Encourage them to see someone else or open an Etrade account. Adios.
Fortunately, my lack of intervention or lack of advice on their portfolios, wasn’t necessarily a life or death matter as it might be in a medical situation.
Maybe it’s time to get a new doctor. Perhaps an Indian Shaman of the Amazon.
Watch these guys take a trip of a lifetime on Ayahuasca, “Vine of the Soul”.
Darren
There has always existed an element of fear on the part of doctors. This may have increased with the increased litigation in current years. However, this condition exists in Canada, Great Britain, France, and other peer nations. Drugs are cheaper in these countries. Pill popping is still a problem, perhaps for reasons of potential litigation or perhaps simply due to laziness on both sides. It takes much more effort to suggest and monitor a regimen of diet and exercise than to prescribe a pill.
One reality that is presented on this blog and pretty much everywhere else is that there are many reasons for any one condition and many propositions as to how to address the problem. The way to solve this sort of problem is to address each reason one by one.
The involvement of seemingly unfettered profit driven influence in creating and exacerbating the condition or problem can be seen in two areas which can be easily addressed and which should be addressed. Advertising and lobbying to support the sale of drugs does nothing whatsoever to promote the well being of the patient only the increase in profits for the industry. In fact, more and more studies show that this approach to curing medical conditions only adds to the problem.
The medical industry should be driven by doctors and not profit driven elements, such as the pharmaceutical industry. It is the doctor with the patient that should be the only deciding factor in dealing with an ailment. What on earth does a cartoon character on TV have to do with it?
The main drive here should be to communicate to our government that it must stop relying on special interest funding and regulate the industries by following the intelligent examples of our peer nations. Get rid of the advertising of drugs. The success of a drug should depend on whether or not it is effective, not some idiot asking his doctor about it.
Defensive medicine is rampant. Having worked on med mal cases for decades, I have seen it close up. Generally however, the defensive medicine does take the place of over testing. CT scans, MRI’s, etc. that are simply not needed, Also generally, the younger the patient, the more likely the over testing. The older the patient, the less over testing. Over medicating is sometimes defensive medicine. But, over medicating is a double edged sword, sometimes being part of the med mal complaint filed against a doc. The liability is higher the younger the potential plaintiff. An 18 year old basketball phenom, w/ potential future earnings in 9 or even 10 figures, would be the most over tested patient in the country. Note I didn’t say the world. The US is a litigation industry machine. The fact that any med mal reform was not a part of Obamacare is directly attributable to plaintiff’s attorneys being the major contributor to Dems. The litigation industry is helping ruin this country.
Pogo,
Is there an element in these prescription rates due to practitioners fearing liability for failing to provide an anti-depressant type med and the patient thereafter committing an act of self harm? I have read there is a tendency for practitioners to order broad and sometimes unnecessary tests due to fear of liability due to failure to diagnose.
Dianne Feinstein, a particularly despicable pol for many reasons, has the Ca. wine industry being one of her bigger contributors. She is anti-cannabis.
Isaac, Being a positive person, I like to find points of agreement. Cannabis being illegal is caused by the cabal you point out. That said, like alcohol, cannabis is a depressant. So, any use should be considered in that regard. My friend, Pogo, disagrees w/ the legalization. I simply respectfully disagree w/ his medical opinion. It is possible for normal people to disagree w/o acrimony.