Antidepressant Use Zooms, As Talk Therapy Slips
Jeanwah
Posts: 6,363
Antidepressants have surpassed blood pressure pills as the most prescribed drugs in the land. National surveys found more than 10 percent of Americans were taking antidepressants in 2005, up from about 6 percent in 1996.
The research, published in the current issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, also finds that as drug treatment increased use of talk therapy fell--to 19 percent from 32 percent.
"There's being a greater emphasis placed on medications rather than psychotherapy in treating mental health problems," Columbia psychiatrist Marc Olfson, lead author of the paper, toldBloomberg. "I hope these numbers will draw attention to how many people are being prescribed these medications."
We wondered how prescriptions have fared since 2005, given the strong warnings about suicidal thinking and behavior in children the FDA had drugmakers slap on some of the most popular antidepressants in late 2004.
The folks at Wolters Kluwer Health Pharma Solutions ran the numbers for us this morning. Total prescriptions for antidepressants in the U.S. kept rising, hitting 230 million in 2008, up 27 million, or 13 percent, from 203 million in 2005.
http://www.npr.org/
Other than Big Pharma making out on the increase of antidepressant use, exactly how does the increase help us better than Talk Therapy? Is society really willing to rather take pills than actually find out why we're depressed, by talking about it?
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did you forget this is america?
we have drive thru pharmacies for christsakes
:roll:
Where I'm not ugly and you're lookin' at me
I know many people really are depressed, but come on. I think some people think they are just supposed to be happy all the time. What did people do before antidepressants?
To some degree, I think antidepressants keep people from really living life.
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
It reduces people's ability to learn their own coping mechanisms. It's why the world is going more and more PC, with more and more "outrage" for stupid things.
It'll only get worse as the kids we have now...that participate in sports where everyone wins and no one loses...where parents yell at the coaches and demand that their kid play more...as these kids grow up, their feelings of entitement will be far greater than we have now. Their coping skills will be far worse. Their pharmacy bills will be far greater.
It's odd... it was almost more healthy growing up keeping your feelings bottled up like in past eras. At least for the most part you learned to work things out on your own.
Now, kids talk about their problems, and instead of helping them work through them and learn to cope, a lot of parents run off to a counselor or are recommended to by their school.
Granted, some kids do have depression problems, but what teenager doesn't go through moods and get into a funk once in a while.
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
It's difficult for people to have talk therapy when they can't get basic health care and insurance. In the US it seems me we take the fast and easy methods for a cure not realizing how addictive anti-depressants can be.
Peace
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
That's certainly part of the equation. The other thing is that talk therapy, for those with coverage or the means, is "taken" only in intermittent "doses", and yields results that are short-lived for the truly depressed. Clinical depression is a chemical imbalance that is genetic. It's not about having a bad day or rough time in your life. Folks who take the meds and don't need them are just fudging. They don't understand what real depression is and appear to be looking for the easy way out of whatever it is they don't feel they can deal with.
Mohandas K. Gandhi
~I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulette I could have worn.~
Henry David Thoreau
we have drive-thru liquor stores, too
Wash me in the blood of Rock & Roll
Well I've been 'diagnosed' with clinical depression. And have done both 'happy' pills and talk therapy. And frankly I HATED both of them.
The pill was just a daily reminder that there was something wrong with me, and talking to a complete stranger who you feel is silently judging you does not help either.
Now I just pretty much ignore it, sure I'm still unhappy with a lot of things in my life, but at least for me the medication wasn't the 'quick' fix I was looking for.
I am probably a good example of this.
I struggled for a couple of years trying to force some things to work, but felt I had lost the the capacity to handle just about any kind of stress. I went to talk therapy and followed my therapists instructions. I was also on anti-depressants. I improved in some areas, but the major problems were still there. I still wasn't coping.
Eventually, I ended up sabotaging my life and let all of my responsibilities slip through my fingers. I gave everything up.
Now I'm unemployed, just moved across the country from all of my family and am getting a divorce. Thing is, as soon as I moved and admitted my marriage was over, I stopped taking the anti-depressants. I still have A LOT of shit to deal with, but feel like I can actually handle it. It's a huge relief.
I don't think there IS a quick fix, in fact, I don't think there is a complete FIX period. People with clinical depression have to battle it their entire lives. Meds have to go through trial and error periods since the correct chemical fix is not the same for everyone. Then there's always the immunity factor. After a long period of time on any drug, your body develops an immunity and needs a higher dose, or a different drug altogether. The talk therapy is only valuable if you find the right person to confide in. Even that, after a while, just seems to be more of the same. It either "sticks", or it doesn't.
God bless for being able to hack it on your own. That kind of fortitude is pretty scarce in our society today.
Mohandas K. Gandhi
~I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulette I could have worn.~
Henry David Thoreau