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The Leonard Lopate Show

Overmedicated America?

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

In 2006, the United States accounted for 66 percent of the global antidepressant market. Are Americans overmedicated? and have pharmaceutical firms convinced many of us to use drugs we may not need? Charles Barber's new book is Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation.

Weigh in: Do you think Americans are overmedicated? Have public perceptions of psychopharmaceuticals changed in the last couple of decades?


Comments

  • [1] Steve from New Jersey March 04, 2008 - 07:48PM

    Some of us are stubbornly grateful for antidepressants.

    I'm one of those folks who chose the harder road of therapy for over 8 years before reluctantly turning to antidepressants to help manage my anxiety disorder. The therapy helped me tremendously, especially with regards to self awareness of dysfunctional behaviors that precipitate or aggravate my anxieties. However, antidepressants have augmented the benefits of my therapy by turning down the hyper-vigilance associated with my condition.

    Antidepressants don't make me comfortably numb. Rather, they allow me to have the perspective and appropriate behaviors of a normal functioning person.
  • [2] Natalie from Staten Island March 05, 2008 - 12:37PM

    Unfortunately, it's the OVERmedication that leads to stigmas when the medication IS necessary, as in your case, Steve.

    I was seeing a psychiatrist for what seemed to be acute anxiety. I ended up with (after a 5 minute interview with him) a diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder. Fast-forward 2 years and 10 medications later, and I checked myself into an emergency room. Turns out the problems were attributed to SIDE EFFECTS OF ALL THE MEDICATIONS, instead of an organic problem that required medication therapy. The medication combinations could easily have killed me, and I was smacked with that reality at the death of Heath Ledger.

    Medications are there to treat the causes and symptoms of disease. Unfortunately, the causes are all-to-often overlooked nowadays, and knee-jerk reactions from doctors result. Had my doctor not been so enthusiastic to break out the prescription pad, it could have been determined what the SOLITARY cause of so many symptoms was.

    Someday I might NEED a medication as a genuine solution to a genuine problem. I hope I'll recognize that situation, because for too long, the boy has been crying "wolf".
  • [3] Jaime Delio (deli-o) from Queens March 05, 2008 - 01:55PM

    The funny thing about social "muckers", as foretold in the Social fiction"Stand on Zanzabar", is that when these individuals loose control and start randomly shooting up a school or fast food restaurant, the press inevitable will talk about how the individual had recently stopped taking their antidepressant drugs. Why is it never considered that these individuals where not sociopaths before they started taking the medications they then went off?

    Maybe people are depressed because they have a reason to. The medicating of America only acts to prevent us from collectively changing those problems in our society that makes us unhappy. These drugs do not make us better people, just more efficient drones.

    We should also stop calling spoiled brats, bipolar.


  • [4] Gene March 05, 2008 - 01:58PM

    IED--Intermittent Explosive Disorder??

    And here I always thought it was just because I'm Irish!

    Cúchulainn in "The Cattle Raid of Cooley" would have to go into his uncontrollable "warp-spasm" before slaughtering thousands. Very Irish.

This thread is closed.


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