Effexor, Paxil - Overhyped and Overprescribed?
In a recent article in Psychology Today, psychiatrist Mark Sichel discussed the potential link between overprescription of medications in the antidepressant category and the need for drug companies to sell their product and make money.
The first and core line of the article is, "Drug companies have been instrumental in promoting psychiatric diagnoses designed to market drugs."
This claim is a powerful one, and one that has many patients and caregivers concerned. Of course, as Sichel points out, there are many valid reasons to take an antidepressant. Clinical depression or a major depressive disorder can rob people of the energy to even function in their lives without some medical help. Bipolar disorder is utterly exhausting, and can drive sufferers to extreme lengths in order to survive their terrifying mood shifts. There is no disputing the role of medicine properly applied in society.
However, is it possible that we are overmedicating for our problems? Sichel raises the point that shyness is sometimes diagnosed as a mental disorder, and that the mourning process following a particularly heartfelt death is lumped in as major depressive disorder. Pharma companies do, of course, have a vested interest in demonstrating that their medicines are a balm for many different problems.
Couple this with the recent revelation that nearly a third of medical studies involving antidepressants are not published where they can be readily discovered by doctors or the public, and the picture becomes more sobering still. After all, these are medicines that have been suggested to cause serious birth defects and potential aggravation of suicidal thoughts in adolescents. We as a society would be right to stop and take a long, hard look at the companies that are promoting these medicines to us. It is not a crime to ask if we are overmedicating. This is not a matter of overreacting and refusing to vaccinate children based on one faulty study — antidepressants are one of the most profitable classes of drug in the United States and deserve our careful scrutiny.
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