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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!
Maybe those drugs are just super expensive. A total number of consumers would be more useful.
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.
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I started dealing with depression about 10 years ago. I have tried many drugs with little benefit but plenty of the worse results such as weight gain, sexual side effects, and mania. I have been hospitalized multiple times on both sides of the spectrum but nothing was ever stated as a physical cause other than stress.
Only in the past year was a test done to check for imbalances that may lead to depression. It turns out my vitamin D levels were very low. Many people cannot create or absorb vitamin D very well (especially a problem in winter). To treat it, I was told to take 5000 IU of D-3. Guess what, it worked! And within a few days and not 30 days like some drugs that must build up in your body. Now I take a lower dose (2000 IU) as supplement. If I feel a bit off mood-wise, I can take a dose and it makes a difference within 30 minutes. Also, it significantly cheaper. I can get a 100 doses of D-3 5000 IU for $5 or 200 doses of 2000 IU for $6. I would pay at least $25 for a 30 day supply of anything else as a prescription and that is only if my deductible was met.
Big pharma always downplays nutrition supplements (even studies that support it) as natural cures because they cannot patent it and charge $5 and up per dose. That being said, some of these drugs do genuinely help people with certain conditions. The problem is the lack of diagnosis to determine the cause of the problem and just trying to chase symptoms with drugs that create more problems than they may fix and may take a month before any benefit is seen. With depression, that is a long time to basically go without help and subjected to immediate side effects only to make a person feel even worse about life.
Exercise and diet is not downplayed because they know that people do not have the drive, resources and/or time for it be a factor in not needing to take their drug for whatever condition.
I Cater to the Needs of Stupid People. - from a coffee mug Christmas gift
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
I can be happy in my circumstances but not completely content given all the things that are happening in the world. Call it idealism.
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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.