[cheerfulgreek]

Originally Posted by AKA_Monet

Well, it was sometime in the late 1970's when hospitalization was no longer enforced on any unwilling adult unless police became involved... I remember President Reagan signing that decree and a whole bunch of people with true disorders were put out on the street. They became the bums and homeless. But by the time the police were involved, the person has allegedly committed a crime, i.e. assault, robbery, carrying a weapon to cause bodily harm, etc.

Zyban et al. is used to help people to stop smoking. So if that drug was included, that is why they might be saying massive increases in anti-depressants.

Also, when Prozac was admitted to the formulary, Eli Lilly did attempt to stop the selling of the nutritional supplement L-Tryptophan saying it caused a rare eosinophilia. But many drugs cause odd side-effects, including Prozac, which has more dangerous ones and that is why Pharma started making extended release tabs. Tryptophan has repeated shown to have better effects than Prozac or Wellbutrin.

I think we see new drug systems to treat psychotropic conditions or mental conditions without the full knowledge of neurology or biochemical genetics that are in play to developing the "true" mental disorders. However, I would rather someone with Schizo-affective disorder be treated with Olazapine, anyday...

I am not following your concern: Is your thinking that there is something wrong with people globally? Or how come the poorest of the poor do not suffer from depression? Or you were merely shocked at the number of US citizens using (abusing) antidepressants? Let's not talk about the amount of antidepressent drugs in flushed down the toilet and may be in our drinking water...

I can tell you that very few people actively do have bipolar I or II and are NOT medicated, and had no idea they have it. Some depression and bipolars do correlate with type 2 diabetes development. The research as to why is sketchy at best.

My concern is I don't think the patients who are being prescribed the drugs are actually depressed. I think a lot of it is to make large profits. I mean c'mon think about it.

Some of the things you were posting about took place in the 70s and 80s, but what I think modern psychiatry has done is to confuse the two. Depression and depression. I know that sounds crazy but I couldn't think of a better way to word it. It's kind of like a creation of depression, so pharmaceutical and other health care companies are more into making profits from health rather than contributing to it. Did I lose you here? Basically they're telling patients they're depressed and they're not.

Seriously, there's probably about one in four people who appear to be depressed and is treated as such, but in reality the patient is pretty much dealing with the aftermath of a recent blow, like the end of a marriage, or the loss of a job or something related to those things.