To me it seems like the psychiatric community is over-diagnosing and over-medicating people. If you get depressed you now have "depression" a serious mental disorder requiring medication. The same for anxiety and ADHD. What's more troubling is the fact that so many children under the age of 18 are being doped with all of these nasty ineffective antidepressants, mood-stabilizers, antipsychotics. A depressed kid may not need a pharmaceutical cocktail, he/she might just need a friend. Meanwhile the pharmaceutical companies can't count all the money they are raking in. You can go to a psych ward and find that virtually all of the patients are on the same drug, like Seroquel, whose makers had a suit filed against them for questionable marketing practices. Why is medication the first treatment most of the time? When you are dealing with disorders of the mind it's not so simple just to be solved with a pill. There is this common thought that an inbalance of neurotransmitters is to blame for the effects of depression, etc. That may be true but the inbalance is the effect of the disorder not that cause. Why not treat the cause? Which is mental, interpersonal, not physiological.
it's all about profit. the medication helps to 'dumb' people down, making them more calm and more influenced by external sources. pharmaceutical companies are all about profit - they sell weak drugs that have little to no effect so you must keep buying them. it's the corporations, man! /hippie
Very true, my high school was like a pharmacy. Any drug, guaranteed, some one in my school was getting it prescribed. Pharmaceuticals have become the standard for treating patients. Psychological problems are simply too difficult for the average psychiatrist to fix, so what do they do? They prescribe drugs. Even worse, many times the parents are the ones encouraging the doctor to pass out something to "fix their child" Depression is a mental problem, and doctors know that drugs only cure the symptoms. As long as someone is using an anti-depressant, they will never get better. The doctors are making money, the drug companies are making money, who is gonna disturb the system?
because it's easy for a doctor to say here, take this pill, you will feel a lot better"....and they do...and they do....and they do..... This is why MJ is illegal, because MJ cures all and with it being legal, people would smoke it, and not have a need for these pills that the docs and big pharma make millions apon millions a year on.
Did you ever hear that one about the psychiatrist who wanted to be taken seriously like an MD? He found a prescription pad one day, and started scribbling... And there we have it kids, the invention of the modern psychiatrist. Its all too easy to give medications for things that, before the latest version of the DSM, didn't exist before...Remember the old chesnut about the mental disorder of homosexuality, for over 20 years, it was a psychiatrists remit to try and cure the 'disease', and yet it gets struck off the list in 1973? How many more additions, and remissions, are going to come with the new DSM in 2013?
I'm worried about the long-term consequences of SSRI's for example. I just don't think it's cool to be fucking around with your serotonin like that. They are not even effective in my opinion anyway. I think placebos are just as effective. I know many people that are depressed and not suicidal.
Not really why MJ is illegal...like at all.... And also, I have a real problem with people using MJ to cure depression. If you are depressed, it's perfectly okay to smoke when you feel the need to alleviate your symptoms, but understand that it will never cure you. You still need to deal with the real problem. How does taking a bunch of chemicals with temporary effects going to treat your depression? Depression IS a serious problem, and at the root of it, is a person with problems in their life. Not only do they need to fix their mental state, but they need to fix the problems that are making them depressed. The fact that drugs are used to "treat" depression is completely laughable... btw, love Seinfeld!!
I won't lie seroquel changed my life. From what i've seen it depends on person to person it can take years to find the right medicine. Wrong. There are chemical imbalances that cause some people's depression and they can't help it. It's not as easy as flipping a switch in your head and whats it matter to you what they take? especially if it helps them. There are also tons of people on the opposite side who like you said are depressed due to their life situation etc which drugs won't help them at all. I'm just sayin man sometimes the drugs really do turn people's lives around. FUCK SSRI!!
So has locking people away in institutions; out of sight, out of the collective mind... Doesn't really mean it solves anything, does it? The psychotropic medications that are prescribed for various mental illnesses are often as dangerous to the health of the user, as suicide and liver damage. In fact, most of them come with the caveat that it can in certain circumstances can cause otherwise unsuicidal people to commit suicide... The problem is that noone really knows what effect it will have on the end user. I'll be honest, I'm one of the people on these medications, not an SSRI in particular, but I have had them, amongst others; I have stabilised with their help, I just like to be a patient who is aware of the potential problems before they have the chance to arise...
Some people derive tremendous benefit from psychiatric drugs. Some don't. This is why it's important to meet with not only a psychiatrist (for the drugs) but also a therapist in tandem (for the, well, therapy). This two-pronged approach has been proven to work best. Likewise, it's important to be absolutely open with both your therapist and psychiatrist. I would never suggest that anybody take an SSRI, though. There's a lot of evidence that they simply do nothing beyond placebo. The other neurotransmitter specific reuptake inhibitors are awesome tools, however, IF they work for you. A lot of people's problems, when they get prescribed this meds, is not being absolutely open with their psychiatrists. This causes problems, and sometimes those problems are fatal. So it's not just an issue of the psychiatric mindset this country has, it's an issue with the western inflated ego.
I have experience in this department, so believe me, I know. It's unbelievable the way psychiatrists push pills these days. Having bad circumstances causes you to feel depressed, but is clearly not a mental disorder. Yet people in these circumstances are given anti-depressants, which are supposed to be for people with a true mental disorder. I have experience with bi-polar diagnosis, and based on my experience, as well as things I've seen, it seems to me that this emergence in bipolar correlates to an increase in higher levels of consciousness, and spiritual breakthroughs, that our society does not try to understand, and instead deems to be a manic episode, or something like that.
I'm going back to my old Psychiatrist so I can get back on ADHD meds and loo over anxiety. Took the meds they gave me for about 8-9 years before I quit them all together. The long term side effects fucked me up and I wish I never got on them. They did help me though in school, only reason I'm going back on them. If I don't feel like taking them, I'm sure some friends will have fun with them.
Sort of like the old "schizophrenics are shamans" idea? I will agree that SOMETIMES mania can be spiritually-induced. For most people however, no way. They become far too violent, and far too detached from society in a radically negative fashion. Maybe we have different views on the spiritual state, but according to my system the healthiest spiritual mindset is of a person who can live in this world, and out of this world, in tandem. Hand in hand.
Well, I absolutely know that my experiences I have had were spiritual breakthroughs. Thanks to my intelligence and level of consciousness, I was able recover ON MY OWN shortly after my initial experience, and realize that the bi-polar label was a mis-diagnosis based on their not understanding, and stopped taking the medication, and have to this day a GREATLY IMPROVED mindset and sense of well-being, I know there are other people who have similar experiences. I'm not saying that every diagnosis of bi-polar is spiritual in nature, but I know there are people who have had similar experiences to mine, and there is SOME level of relationship between the spiritual experience and the bi-polar diagnosis. To what level that is true, I cannot say.