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"Mental health has declined as prescriptions for antidepressants and other drugs keep surging
Reporter Sarah G. Miller notes in “1 in 6 Americans Takes a Psychiatric Drug” that prescriptions for mental illness keep surging. As of 2013, almost 17 percent of Americans were taking at least one psychiatric drug, up from 10 percent in 2011, according to a new study. Miller elaborates:
“Antidepressants were the most common type of psychiatric drug in the survey, with 12 percent of adults reporting that they filled prescriptions for these drugs… In addition, 8.3 percent of adults were prescribed drugs from a group that included sedatives, hypnotics and anti-anxiety drugs, and 1.6 percent of adults were given antipsychotics.”
This increase in medications must be boost ing our mental health, right? Wrong. In “Is Mental Health Declining in the U.S.?,” Edmund S. Higgins, professor of psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina, acknowledges the “inconvenient truth” that Americans’ mental health has, according to some measures, deteriorated."
There has been a lot of press lately about the re-emegence of hallucinogenic/entheogenic meds in lab studies and in practice with select patients, and their seemingly miraculous effects on psychiatric conditions that have been resistant to conventional prescription meds. Results have been so good with PTSD that the VA is looking into them. The VA reversed its own rules and now allows patients to self-treat with cannabis and still be allowed in their psychiatric clientele.
The entheogens science is now reinvestigating include cannabis, ayahuasca, psilocybin, mescaline, LSD, and mescaline.
That is the dilemma I'm in now. I haven't taken any SSRIs for over ten years, after being on them off and on for a total of probably 5 years. While I have been able to keep a job and otherwise function, virtually every day can be a struggle just to get through.
The worst side effects were having excessive, foul smelling flatus, diarrhea, dry mouth, and a feeling of being wired. Withdrawal, even with a taper was accompanied by the infamous "brain zaps."
The public as always is used as the guinea pig for long-term drug studies. Not to fault the DEA (about this point) because there's no way to tell what effect a drug is going to have several years down the road. It's the way the system works. The drug approval process is itself flawed.
Even though I could definitely stand to have therapy or treatment of some sort, I'm averse to trying any SSRI because of possible dangers. They aren't the panacea we've been told in all those flowery commercials.
I'm not really surprised. I think modern life and its stresses has a lot to do with it. We're lonely b/c we've moved away from our families and don't know our neighbors and the divorce rate is over 50% and that's for the people who even bother to get married anymore. We eat crap food and can't lose weight and our overall health is declining. It's no wonder we're depressed. And then the mental health facilities for those who may need more than a pill. . . had a student get raped last week and her mom was trying to get her hospitalized b/c she is very emotionally fragile to begin with, and she had to call 30 places before she could even get her seen. And yup you guessed it--no money and no health insurance. The truth is these guys just want to give a pill and absolve themselves of all other responsibility.
I'd always been a moody kid. Mom was moody too, and it wasn't a problem. If I needed space, she gave it, and me to her too. But she and dad were gone and I was amid the marriage dissolving, and my son out of control. I saw a pdoc.... and he said I was depressed. So he gave me an anti depressent. Then, instead of manic moments, I'd go way high. So they added another med. I didn't work so he had me take more I was taking sixteen pills to even out the ad. I also had surgery long before which effected how I absorb meds at all, so none of them worked right. I felt like a bouncing ball someone else was bouncing, except it was 'good' that I was being 'treated'.
Then I started passing out. I'd just know, if I didn't get where I could sit or lie back I'd faint. It was unpredictable and would last hours. The pdocs hadn't a clue. But I had started cooking something and had an 'incident' and woke up with the pan just about boiled dry. I decided to correlate things, and figured out all had been after the anti anxiety stuff.
But I took nothing for a few days, and realized I felt like myself. I backed out on ALL of it, one pill every couple weeks. It took time but I celebrated the last pill. And guess what? I'd been able to think and think about what I wanted. I'd learned how to sense a bad moment and its the exception to pills. I take a st johns wort... 1 pill only and it vanishes. I haven't needed one in a while.
Thing is, I'm clearly not 'normal'. I organize my life around my own values and rules. I allow myself to enjoy things I do my way. We aren't all made the same. Some of us are 'normal'. Some aren't. Some do need chemicals meds to help, but the problem is that the 'system' is so crowded and busy and overwhelmed, the mantra is find a pill that makes client calm and not a problem. Send them off with a bottle of pills. Next client. Not only do some not need the battery of chemicals, or maybe just a few, but if there was more consideration of what they had to deal with in life and fixing that, they'd likely be quite different. Again, if meds are needed fine, but only the bare minimum....
I'm a loner but have always been a loner. Mom was sort of and didn't try to make me different. I get stressed by too many people, and too many expectations so I 'fit in'. When I operate in my own space unless I choose not to, I do great.
Instead of dispensing pharma's golden ticket as the only option, if there was more people to people treatment it would be far better. And there would be room for those who due to trauma must have someone help. If you ask former patients who have chosen other ways, its often the same story. Ten minute appointments, script already written. No apparent concern over side effects. If you don't do pills, want some counseling or testing, then you can go somewhere else. Except somewhere else is booked up for ten years.
We need pdocs to learn how to treat the WHOLE person. And not to expect everyone to turn into the same 'normal'. Life isn't about all fitting into the same mold and you can be happy without being the same as the other clones.
Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
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I've had lifelong problems with anxiety and depression and I've found an improved diet does far more in the long run than anti depressants. I actually think a lot of rages was triggered by a diet dominated by refined carbs, I was in a cycle or sugar highs and crashes. I've changed my diet and take fish oil and the change is dramatic.
You don't say! Anti-depressants relieve depression symptoms. That's all they do. They don't affect the causes of depression (which leads to... the rate of depression in the country's population). If you want to address the causes of depression, it requires a lot of therapy with a good therapist (absent the infinitesimally small number of cases caused by diet).
This isn't a mystery (notwithstanding those who pretend it is). Its like the breathless headline a few years back that organic vegetables are no more nutritious than conventional ones! You don't say!
Organics were bought by people because of the lack of pesticides on them and reduced environmental impact of their growing. Both confuse two different things.
I've had lifelong problems with anxiety and depression and I've found an improved diet does far more in the long run than anti depressants. I actually think a lot of rages was triggered by a diet dominated by refined carbs, I was in a cycle or sugar highs and crashes. I've changed my diet and take fish oil and the change is dramatic.
A few months ago, someone here posted they had been reccomended magnesium suppliments and Vit d3 for mood changes and depression. I gave up medication a few years ago when I realized that due to the damage from the severe colitus, I don't absorb any of it right. I have found that I deal with moods better without it being chemically controlled. But the very first time I took the D3 and magnesium the moods are hardly there at all. And I don't carry this sense of doom around when something changes. And all it is is a suppliment of what our food does not provide, or we can't absorb that way.
I'm sure there are some things which nutrition can't fix, but if you do the nutrition right then you can narrow and find the specific problem that needs to be treated, not take a full spectrum fixit which is more like a sledgehammer over a tap.
You don't say! Anti-depressants relieve depression symptoms. That's all they do. They don't affect the causes of depression (which leads to... the rate of depression in the country's population). If you want to address the causes of depression, it requires a lot of therapy with a good therapist (absent the infinitesimally small number of cases caused by diet).
This isn't a mystery (notwithstanding those who pretend it is). Its like the breathless headline a few years back that organic vegetables are no more nutritious than conventional ones! You don't say!
Organics were bought by people because of the lack of pesticides on them and reduced environmental impact of their growing. Both confuse two different things.
ITA. When I was part of a DBSA support group, the facilitator said that there were three components to mental health wellness: medications (the right ones), therapy, and support. Even more if you count things like diet, exercise, meditation, and the like. As I understand, the real purpose of medication is to be more amenable to therapy. It's hard work, but a tremendous help. I pay more attention to what I eat and I take magnesium, vitamin D (both of which are purported to help with mood) and Omega 3s. My therapist also suggested meditation, which was next to impossible for me to do at first, but got easier and left me calm and energized at the same time. We also used a session to discuss self-care ideas. Put it all together, and it means that I have now been fairly stable for the last few months.
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