400% Rise in Anti-Depressant Pill Use: Americans Are Disempowered

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/drugs/152873/400_rise_in_anti-depressant_pill_use%3A_americans_are_disempowered_--_can_the_ows_uprising_shake_us_out_of_our_depression/

400% Rise in Anti-Depressant Pill Use: Americans Are Disempowered -- Can the OWS Uprising Shake Us Out of Our Depression?

October 26, 2011 |

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently reported that antidepressant use in the United States has increased nearly 400 percent in the last two decades, making antidepressants the most frequently used class of medications by Americans ages 18-44. Among Americans 12 years and older, 11 percent were taking antidepressants by 2005-2008 (the most recently reported study period), and 23 percent of women ages 40–59 years were taking them.

Why has U.S. antidepressant use skyrocketed? Are the symptoms of what is commonly called depression—helplessness, hopelessness, and immobilization—always evidence of a medical condition? Or is it time to repoliticize a great deal of our despair, and reconsider the old-fashioned antidepressant of political activism?

[LiberalEsto]

1. Because we're in a Depression

obviously we're depressed about not having jobs, income, savings, money for retirement or education, and in some cases not having homes.

[Ghost Dog]

4. ... And feeling unable to do anything about it.

Helpless, hopeless, immobilized.

[saras]

2. And never mind the statistical evidence that they don't work.

[Betty]

9. I have a lot of friends

Who've been on antidepressants for years and I have to say none of them has gotten any better, and in several cases, they just seem to get worse and worse. I know that for some, antidepressants are life saving, but I also believe that they are passed out like candy to way too many people who are not helped at all. one of my friends sees her shrink for like 15 minutes once a month because that is all the insurance will pay for, and he just keeps prescribing more and more meds rather than take the time to really listen to her. Not his fault, but this "treatment" of throwing chemicals at the problem doesn't help her.

[canoeist52]

3. I would like to know how many Americans, since 2008, have stopped

taking these and other meds because they simply can't afford them now.

[bvar22]

5. Slick Marketing by Big Pharma & the cooperation of their 1st Cousins in the US media.

Nobody is EVER supposed to feel sad, or down, or be unhappy about anything.
If you do, you are SICK,
and there is a PILL that will make everything A-OK!

[yurbud]

6. Roseanne Barr once said she stopped because she realized they made the intolerable tolerable.

I don't oppose there use, but there is something to her thought.

[They_Live]

7. This might explain my

400% increase in alcoholic beverage consumption over the past few years.

[Democrats_win]

8. It's the usury/credit/mortgage fraud industry--stupid!

The slavery of debt has turned America into a nation of scowlers. Even as Americans exercise, when they should be happy, they're scowling.

This is a terrible situation for our once happy-go-lucky nation.

[Marazinia]

10. Prozac

Didn't some horrid Bush administration official suggest that workers unhappy with their jobs find a new job or take Prozac?

Those drugs are a joke anyway. They don't work any better than a placebo statistically, yet companies are allowed to make billions off of them.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/feb/26/mentalhealth.medicalresearch

Many people are depressed and angry and discouraged because society treats them like garbage, a pill won't change that.