On My Mind
As recently as the 1950s, Whitaker contends, the four major mental disorders—depression, anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia—often manifested as episodic and “self limiting”; that is, most people simply got better over time. Severe, chronic mental illness was viewed as relatively rare. But over the past few decades the proportion of Americans diagnosed with mental illness has skyrocketed. … One in eight Americans, including children and even toddlers, is now taking a psychotropic medication. …
Whitaker compiles anecdotal and clinical evidence that when patients stop taking SSRI’s, they often experience depression more severe than what drove them to seek treatment. A multination report by the World Health Organization in 1998 associated long-term antidepressant usage with a higher rather than a lower risk of long-term depression.
Entire Robin Hanson post worth reading.
Always on my mind
It’s good to see that economists (Hanson, Goodman) disseminate claptrap claims about psychiatric illness as readily as any truther who thinks thimorsal causes autism — i.e., on the basis spurious “research” and anecdotes (which are, as Homer Simpson says, “the best kind of evidence”). The respondents to Hanson’s article pretty well devastate the claims in her article. But why should readers believe anything she writes about economics any more than the falsehoods she about mental illness she perpetuates?
Is mental illness more prevalent than 50 years ago? Or is it merely diagnosed more often than 50 years ago? Maybe the pills available today have fewer side effects than 50 years ago so people seek therapy more often. I don’t know the answer but I’ve often suspected that some people take SSRIs to lessen the daily stresses of life. Some of this stress is probably self-induced when people attempt to burn the candle at both ends. To keep my sanity I try to de-stress my life.
I recently read an article that claimed SSRIs are effective for severe depression but are relatively worthless for people with low-to-moderate depression. The implication is that SSRIs are probably often prescribed to people that gets no benefit from them.
Is depression passing like a cold or a long-term illness like diabetes?
It’s a tough question, but I’d say that in general, I would prefer to take as few medications as possible, especially when there is a large potential for addiction or other side effects.
I’ve read several essays that question whether temporary depression is actually a good thing. I think depression in general is a signal that we need to change something about our lives. For most people, it works well as an indicator. For others, the system malfunctions.
From this article and other things that I’ve read, there definitely seems to be over prescribing going on. People that shouldn’t be taking SSRIs are taking them and are ending up worse off than they were before they started taking them.