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Mass Psychosis In the USA?
Hugh Pickens writes "James Ridgeway writes in Al Jazeera that with over $14 billion in sales in 2008, antipsychotics have become the single top-selling therapeutic class of prescription drugs in the U.S., surpassing drugs used to treat high cholesterol and acid reflux. While once upon a time, antipsychotics were reserved for a relatively small number of patients with hard-core psychiatric diagnoses, today it seems, everyone is taking antipsychotics. 'Parents are told that their unruly kids are in fact bipolar, and in need of anti-psychotics, while old people with dementia are dosed, in large numbers, with drugs once reserved largely for schizophrenics,' writes Ridgeway. 'Americans with symptoms ranging from chronic depression to anxiety to insomnia are now being prescribed anti-psychotics at rates that seem to indicate a national mass psychosis.' By now, just about everyone knows how the drug industry works to influence the minds of American doctors, plying them with gifts, junkets, ego-tripping awards, and research funding in exchange for endorsing or prescribing the latest and most lucrative drugs. According to Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, under the tutelage of Big Pharma, we are 'simply expanding the criteria for mental illness so that nearly everyone has one.'"
No surprise here!
That's crazy!
Aldous Huxley was spot on ...
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Maybe those drugs are just super expensive. A total number of consumers would be more useful.
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(I'm Amrecian)
PocketPermissions Android Permission Guide
yeah, because the US FedGov wants everyone too doped up to care about how badly they are getting fucked by the system...
infowars.com
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Last year my wife was suffering from some anxiety during her pregnancy. An internal medicine doctor prescribed an anti-psychosis drug to treat bipolar disorder. The list of side effects included just about everything you wouldn't want to happen to a pregnant women. What would a drug like this do to an unborn child, let alone an adult!
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Can't we block foreign IPs from this website? Or at least foreign IPs posting as AC?
Can we block redneck bigots from this site? Or at least start Americans with karma -1 by default?
Check out the BBC show "The Century of the Self"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/century_of_the_self.shtml
When you see that, it becomes pretty clear that the US population were unsuspecting guinea pigs in what's certainly the biggest experiment in mass psychology ever done. And that experiment FAILED.
The point is that it's evidence of overprescription, not of excessive psychotic behavior.
There is also a problem in the observations in the summary--notably, the mere fact that we are expanding our clinical definitions of psychological diagnoses is NOT a bad thing--the problem is when people treat them wrong. The good thing about expanding and re-working the definitions is that it lets you describe and identify conditions better in each generation than you did in the generation before, and maybe learn something more about how they should be best treated.
The problem is that almost nobody does real psychotherapy anymore (except for the filthy rich), so in most cases all people do is prescribe medication as if that would treat the problem. There are cases where it will, and there are more cases where it will treat the symptoms, but it often is very much the wrong approach. You can't sit down with someone and cure a psychological issue with a talking-to or folk medicine--they can be complex and very time-consuming and difficult for people to learn to live with or move past or adapt to the world in spite of--but conversations, activities, and the development of a support network in almost every case I have seen has made a bigger impact by far than the use of drugs.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
That sounds a bit paranoid to me. Perhaps you should talk to your doctor. You could probably get drugs to help you with that.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
Well, as is obvious from our ever expanding waistlines, Americans are getting less and less exercise?and probably sunlight too). I wonder if this is, at least in part, contributing to our increased depression. Several studies have shown pretty clearly that exercise is a great, if not the best, treatment for mild to moderate depression. So instead if sucking down big pharma and big agra's endless supply of shit, maybe we should try getting off our ass and going out for a run or bike ride.
Monstar L
Over a decade ago, a school psychologist noticed "odd" behavior in one of my daughters. Under the guise of "vigilence", they looked for people to put on drugs. My girls, in grades 1 and 3, were interrogated -- without my permissions or knowledge -- by a school psychologist, who diagnose them with various psychotic disorders. Why? Because the girls told wild tales -- one claimed to know how to fly, and the other told dark tales ala Poe and Lovecraft.
This bitch of a psychiatrist demanded that we drug our children, and began the process of forcing us to give the girls "medicine" (i.e., anti-psychotic and ADHD drugs), even when other psychiatrists said that my daughters were fine. When asked why she was so insistent on treating my daughters for something that didn't exist, the offending psychiatrist said:
"I've been taking these drugs most of my life. I know they're good for your kids."
Needless to say, I no longer live in Colorado, where this travesty was legal. My girls are intelligent, creative, productive young adults (with lots of quirks, like any smart person). Now that they're adults, they can chose what the do and do not put in their bodies.
American society is driven by a need by people's to feel like a victim, by fear, and by selfish greed. It is a recipe for disaster.
All about me
I imagine it's pretty easy to become depressed in our society.
People who live a job rather than a life do things that advertising and media tell them to do or what other people in their situation do to escape. They turn to alcohol, nightclubs, meaningless sex*, gambling, smoking or anything that is meaningless or self destructive.
* Not that meaningless sex means anything to Slashdotters but I hope my point is made intellectually.
I imagine that these factors, plus the fact that everyone seems to be a big asshole these days contribute to people turning to drugs. Ultmately, people feel disconnected from other people, they are ostracized and bullied. Drugs don't solve problems. You do.
I feel powerless because of the following:
As Adam Smith said, agriculture is the root of all progress. Our society is unsustainable and growth seems to be on top of artificial markets. For example, digital markets like the domain market. Or on advertising.
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
Ask yourself.
Why aren't you happy? You (probably) have: electricity, abundance of food and water, computers, video games, (some) free time, a job, a loving girlfriend/wife? Money?
You're not happy because you cannot be you in this society.
It's that trite cliche that materials do not bring happiness but they are necessity for happiness. You cannot be happy about something before you have shelter, food and water. (Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs)
Our society lacks somethin that people need. Drugs really don't give that to you.
Arguing about happiness on Slashdot. Very odd.
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
I'm a victim! It's the environment! My mom was cruel to me! Hormones make me eat too much! Video games make me violent!
All I need is some understanding. And another pill.
Or I'll kill you.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
TFA's headline talks about anti-psychotic medications, yet the article itself is about the entire class of psychoactive drugs.
Antipsychotics are a small sliver of the class of psycoactive drugs.
Antidepressants are psychoactive, but they are not anti-psychotic. The same applies for anti-anxiety durgs, such as Xanax, mood stabilizers for bipolar disorder (such as lithium), and for drugs used for Attention Defecit, such as ritalyn.
The problem is TFA lumps drugs used for depression and anxiety disorders in the same category as drugs used for treating schizophrenia.
In other words, the headline is misleading. Psychoactive != antipsychotic. The headline is purposefully misleading the reader into thinking that because someone takes a psychoactive drug, they are psychotic, and since americans take a lot of psychoactive drugs, Americans are psychotic.
This isn't a surprising headline for a news service whose primary audience isn't fond of Americans.
I'd expect to see the same sort of headline in a Scientologist publication.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
The expansion of antipsychotic use has nothing to do with the number of people being diagnosed with psychotic disorders. AFAIK, that number hasn't increased much.
The real reason is that over the past 10 or 15 years, antipsychotic meds (i.e. dopamine antagonists) have been used with increasing frequency in patients who do NOT have psychotic symptoms. ("Psychotic symptoms" basically means either hallucinations or delusional thinking). Many of these meds are marketed as "mood stabilizers" for bipolar disorder-- and the criteria for bipolar disorder are so broad and so subjective that just about anyone can be diagnosed with it. Indeed, one of the popular "screening tools" for bipolar disorder is something called the Mood Disorders Questionnaire, which is a bit like those Scientology quizzes that tells you whether Scientology is right for you. (It always is). The MDQ was designed by doctors who work for drug companies-- I've met one of them.
There are three other groups who tend to get lots of antipsychotics-- the elderly (especially in nursing homes), the mentally retarded, and people with plain old depression. The last one is actually the easiest to justify, since there are some studies which suggest that certain antipsychotics can work as adjunctive treatment for depression-- they have managed to get FDA approval for that indication. The first two-- elderly and MR-- are impossible to defend. They don't benefit the patient, they cause cognitive slowing and deterioration of functioning, and they increase overall mortality. Lilly in particular has been guilty of marketing their antipsychotic (Zyprexa) to nursing homes and claiming that it improves "behavioral disturbances of dementia". It doesn't, and they eventually had to pay out billions of dollars in fines.
Any psychiatrist with half a brain knows what's going on here. In the mid 90s all the new antidepressants (Prozac, etc) started to go off-patent and the drug companies lost a major cash cow. Ever since then, the drug companies have sought new indications for dopamine blockers, since they are mostly still on-patent, and most of them are fiendishly expensive.
It's funny when you think about it. Some Americans take drugs to feel better about themselves, but non-Americans talk shit about Americans to make them feel better about themselves. Well, I guess the later is cheaper...