If 16.5% of population needs anti-depressants, something’s wrong

Imagine a society where 11% of the population (aged from 12 up) are on drugs to control long term ailment say for example, hypertension. Isn’t that worrying?

That’s what is happening in America. Except the illness is not physiological but psychological. We’re talking about depression. Doctors call it clinical depression (so that you can be put on drugs and treat it like any other “disease”).

But the strange thing (about the article below) is that the message appears to be saying that there are many more outside the 11% who are left untreated – up to one third.

By simple calculation, if 1/3 is untreated, it would mean that the 11% is the 2/3, making it 16.5% of the population who are on the “depression list” who needs psychiatric drug treatment!

That’s one out of every 6 living souls in America who has been clinically diagnosed as depressed. Isn’t this itself alarming, let alone the fact that there is one third who are “not treated”?

Many severely depressed “untreated in US”

WASHINGTON: The United States is a world leader in rates of antidepressant use, but as many as two-thirds of Americans with severe depression are not on medication, said a government study released Wednesday.

Eleven per cent of Americans age 12 and older are taking antidepressant medication, a slight uptick over a 2009 survey that showed 10.1 per cent, according to the latest data from the National Centre for Health Statistics.

However, just one-third of people with “severe depressive symptoms take antidepressant medication,” said the survey, which described rates of antidepressant use by age, race, income, sex, severity and treatment time.

“Large numbers of Americans are not receiving antidepressants for their clinical depression,” said Mark Olfson, professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, in an interview with AFP.

“There is evidence of a mismatch between who most needs these drugs and who is getting them,” said Olfson, who co-authored a 2009 study that showed rates of antidepressant use in the United States had doubled from 1996 to 2005.

Experts said the shortfall comes despite efforts to convince more primary care physicians to discuss mental health with their patients, since people see their regular doctors more frequently than they do psychiatrists.

Frequent commercials on television and in other media promoting antidepressant drugs in the United States could be leading more people to ask their doctors for such prescriptions, but not among the group that could be most helped by them.

“One of the things you see is when patients start asking for the medication they end up getting prescriptions for much less severe forms of depression,” Olfson said.

“One of the things we know is that antidepressants are most effective when they are given to people with more severe rather than less severe depression.”

The survey also said antidepressants are the most common prescription drug used by people age 18-44, and rates are two and half times higher in women than in men.

Nearly one-quarter (23 per cent) of women age 40-59 take antidepressants, more than in any other age-sex group, said the study, funded by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

What??? Nearly one quarter of women take anti-depressants? If depression is an ailment like any other physiological sickness, why isn’t the World Health Organisation declaring this an epidemic?

The high rate among women is not a surprise, according to Norman Sussman, professor of psychiatry and associate dean for continuing medical education at the New York University school of medicine.

“Women have a much higher rate of anxiety disorders. At any point, women are more likely than men to be amenable to taking medications,” Sussman told AFP.

“Men view acknowledging that they are depressed as some sort of personal or character failure, and more often than women, men to turn to alcohol and drugs to self-medicate, whereas women are more able to talk about their symptoms and seek help and in turn receive it.”

The data also showed significant racial and ethnic differences, with almost 14 per cent of non-Hispanic whites taking antidepressants compared to four per cent of African-Americans and three per cent of Mexican-Americans.

Olfson said that even though non-whites are getting treated less often, studies have shown they are just as likely as whites to suffer from depression.

“The reasons for these differences do require more research and more study. Part of it may have to do with underlying cultural preferences,” said Olfson.

Minority groups “may have different relationships with their physicians than non-Hispanic whites do,” he added. “The role of the church, the role of the family and so forth, they may help to explain this.”

The data was derived from 12,637 people who took part in an ongoing survey of Americans’ health, known as the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHAMES) from 2005-2008, including a household interview and a medical visit.

Previous studies have shown that antidepressant use rates in Europe are around 10 per cent, while Asian countries tend to have much lower numbers of people taking doctor-prescribed antidepressants.

- AFP/wk

I don’t know what to make out of this. I really don’t. Would you accept if we had a population of 11% (from age 12) who are taking long term medication? Isn’t this a health crisis?

Would you accept if one quarter of our women aged 40 – 59 were diagnosed for a particular long term sickness? Again, it would be considered a health crisis, no?

However, in America, when it comes to “clinical depression”, it is accepted by many that is “a common ailment we all have” and hence, drugs are used to alleviate the problem.

Now don’t get me wrong. In extreme cases, drugs may be the answer. But shouldn’t it be non-drug therapy first, and drug administration last? In America, it looks like it is drugs first, second and third.

Why?

That’s because the P$ychiatric Drug Indu$try is worth US$80 billion.

CCHR: THE STAMP—Psychiatric Disorders Fuel $80 Billion Drug Industry

Some professionals in psychiatric field madder than the patients they treat

Do you care for your loved ones? If you do, read on………..

Powerful message in a very strong video.
CCHR: THE STAMP—Psychiatric Disorders Fuel $80 Billion Drug Industry

In the past I have posted how the Psychiatric Drug Industry pushes drugs to earn Big Buck$$. It doesn’t matter if you’re not sick. It doesn’t matter if you are perfectly healthy. What matters is that the Psychiatric Drug Industry wants to make you believe you and/or loved ones are sick, so that you can buy their drug$$ to keep the Billion Dollar P$ychiatric Drug Industry alive.

Here are two of the articles I wrote.

1. Multi-Billion Dollar Psychiatric Drug Industry is coming to getcha!
In the article above, I discussed how the Psychiatric Drug Industry pushes the market for drugs. One thing about psychiatric medicine is that it is a very soft science. Unlike other fields in medicine like oncology, cardiology, gynaecology etc, psychiatric practice is such that you don’t have blood tests, urine tests, x-rays etc to confirm you have a medical condition. You are assessed on what you do and how you carry out what you do. Hence, your diagnosis is very subjective – allowing many patients to believe they are sick (in the head) simply because they have been told they are so. (Qualifying statement – Of course not all everyone in the field of psychiatry is that unethical, but generally speaking, the industry is all about pushing psychiatric drug$$).

2. Psychiatric Drug Industry wants your life and soul
Just listen to the video (below), which can be found in the article I put up in the link above.

Please listen to the 7 min recording below. It may help you save your child, or your elderly parent, who may be subjected to the (drug) treatment they never need to have in the first place.

Pharma Not in Business of Health, Healing, Cures, Wellness

Doesn’t it feel like these people are sicker than the patients they are treating?

They want you to be sick, or if you already are, sicker – so that they can sell you the drugs you don’t need in the first place.

They want your life. They want your soul.

So what’s new that I found out about the P$ychiatric Drug Industry? Here it is – now even medical professionials from other fields are trying to get a piece of the lucrative pie. Here’s your friendly neighbourhood child doctor telling you what you should do to your child.

Doctors recommend evaluating children for ADHD at age four

The American Academy of Pediatrics this weekend expanded its guidelines for diagnosing and treating kids with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, recommending that doctors evaluate all patients aged four to 18 who show signs of the condition.

The new guidelines update decade-old recommendations that focused on diagnosing and managing ADHD in kids aged six to 12. But behavior problems, over-activity and trouble paying attention can show up earlier, researchers said, and ADHD often persists into adolescence or even adulthood.

Pediatricians should also look out for learning disabilities, anxiety and other issues that can go hand-in-hand with ADHD. And, they should tailor treatment with behavior therapy and medication based on kids’ age and severity of symptoms, says a statement published in Pediatrics. (http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/recent)….

Isn’t over-activity and trouble paying attention part of children’s growing up? What’s with these guys? Note that in “severe” cases, medication would be administered. Isn’t this tantamount to designing your thought and behaviour using drugs?

Btw, this practice is not new. It has been around for decades. However, now we see a push (marketing style) for drug administration on very young children.

…Stimulant medications such as Vyvanse, Ritalin and Concerta have also been shown to be effective alone or alongside therapy in this age group.

Those drugs may have side effects, the report notes, including appetite loss, sleep problems and stomach pain. Youngsters with some signs of ADHD, but not a full diagnosis, shouldn’t be medicated, the report says.

Some of the guideline authors disclose consulting relationships with companies that sell ADHD medications in the paper’s conflict of interest section.

“Medication certainly has a stronger effect on the core behavior symptoms of ADHD, but it’s a matter of what the family’s preference is (and) what services are available for them,” said Dr. Mark Wolraich of the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, the guidelines’ lead author.

Note that these drugs are highly potent. It works this way. The drugs control your body and hormones, which controls your brain, which controls your mind, which controls your behaviour.

Sounds like some sort of sci-fi movie from the 20th Century? Nope, this is the Psychiatric Drug Industry of the 21st Century.

Here’s a look at how much of the drugs that’s administered to children happens to be psychiatric drugs.
So Young and So Many Pills

Click on image to enlarge and see the facts yourself. Scary, huh?

For those who think that this only is happening in America, look at what I highlighted. Excerpts from the first hyperlink above. Here it is again. (Multi-Billion Dollar Psychiatric Drug Industry is coming to getcha!) Below is the Singapore scene.

So far in Singapore, we have not reached the level as in the US, where a high number of school children are being prescribed with drugs they don’t need. But at the look of things, we may be heading that way.

Here is an article from the Dept of Paediatrics, NUS.
ADHD – in search of the ‘real’ deal‘

In Singapore ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) is a diagnostic label which has made it into the mainstream with often dire consequences. Every child who is that little bit fidgety, or has touched something they should not, or is full of energy may be labelled as ‘ADHD’ by their parents, teachers or even well meaning strangers. Parents may also seek a diagnosis of ‘ADHD’ as they learn that their child may benefit from special consideration and exemptions during the examination setting. It is therefore important as professionals that a diagnosis of ADHD is an appropriate one.

This is alarming. Far too often, a child in Singapore is given the “ADHD” tag. This not only affects the mental mindset and self-esteem of the child himself, but opens the opportunity for society to accept that should he be prescribed medication for that “illness”, it is good for him – even when he doesn’t need such medication in the first place!

Read the rest of the article and see for yourself the kind of “tests” that is conducted to decipher if the child has ADHD. Yep, they’re not clinical tests. They’re just assessment type tests which is highly subjective.

You dare put your child on medication just because some “experts” feel he needs to be on medication/treatment? Shouldn’t a disease be diagnosed by clinically proven methods, rather than observed behaviour?

Concluding Words

In the old days, when a child is hyperactive, that is considered natural behaviour. At most, disruptive or “naughty”.

Today, it is a sickness which must be cured. Suddenly, over-hyperactivity is an ailment and in extreme cases, drugs will be used to moderate the child’s behaviour.

Welcome to the world of the Multi-Billion Dollar P$sychiatric Drug Industry.

If you care for your loved ones, think twice before allowing him/her to be put on p$sychiatric drug$.

The drug$ are addictive, and make the patient a life-long reliant customer of the Drug Companie$.

Psychiatric Drug Industry wants your life and soul

Last year, in November, I wrote an article about how the Drug Industry works in collaboration with the American Psychiatric Association to profiteer from the public.

Multi-Billion Dollar Psychiatric Drug Industry is coming to getcha!

It has been pointed out that drugs have been used liberally to treat psychiatric patients. It appears that psychiatric drugs are being dispensed like candies to children. In a nutshell, my objections in the above article are:

1. There is a liberal use of drugs to treat depression. Drug therapy is also being used as first choice to treat depression. Shouldn’t it be the last resort instead?

2. The (Psychiatric) Drug Industry has “expanded its terrain” from dishing out drugs on psychiatric patients to anyone who appears to have “psychological and/or emotional anomaly”, including school children who can’t sit still for five minutes. It looks like school children in Singapore are about to be treated the same way as school children in America.

3. These drugs may have side effects that may be worse than the depression the patient has in the first place.

4. These drugs are addictive. If you stop them, you experience withdrawal symptoms.

This is serious stuff. We are allowing healthy people, our children included, to be drugged into madness. These druggers are making people (our children included) either sick when they are healthy to start off with, or sicker than they already are.

But I am not a doctor, let alone a psychiatrist. My words can easily be pooh-poohed by critics. Fortunately, I found a video recording by a professional practitioner, who appears to be confirming what I have been saying about the (Psychiatric) Drug Industry.

Please listen to the 7 min recording below. It may help you save your child, or your elderly parent, who may be subjected to the (drug) treatment they never need to have in the first place.

Pharma Not in Business of Health, Healing, Cures, Wellness

Doesn’t it feel like these people are sicker than the patients they are treating?

They want you to be sick, or if you already are, sicker – so that they can sell you the drugs you don’t need in the first place.

They want your life. They want your soul.