America’s ‘startling’ use of mental-illness drugs: By the Numbers, A Nation of Pill-Poppers

Americans are taking a “startling” amount of mental-health related medications, according to a big new study by Medco Health Solutions. More than 1 in 5 Americans now takes at least one drug to treat a psychological disorder, ranging from antidepressants like Prozac to anti-anxiety drugs like Xanax. Understanding why Americans are taking more pills to treat mental illness “is the next critical goal,” says Dr. Martha Sanjatovic in a statement released by Medco. Here’s a look this growing trend, by the numbers:

How PTSD took over America

The suffering is very real. We’re not saying that people don’t have difficult emotional experiences and aren’t suffering. What we’re saying is this is not necessarily a disorder that people are experiencing, and if people think like that, it can be very disempowering to them. When we think of ourselves as suffering from a disorder in a medical sense, well we go to the doctor and we expect the doctor to prescribe whatever the medical treatment is. We’re not in the driver’s seat. We go along – we tell them [our] symptoms, they listen to us, they diagnose what the problem is, and then they work out what the appropriate treatment is. That’s the mind-set when we’re working within a medical framework and we think of ourselves as suffering from a disorder. We sit down in front of the therapist and we expect the therapist to be like a doctor – to be looking out for what the symptoms are so that they can make the correct diagnosis and prescribe us the right treatment. The language of PTSD invokes those ideas, and I think it’s those ideas that can be quite unhelpful at times. For what we’re talking about here, if it’s a normal, natural process, what’s really important is for the person to be in the driver’s seat for themselves – to make their own choices, their own decisions, because we’re dealing not with a disorder, but a battle within the person to find new meanings and new ways of understanding the world. That’s what they have to do. Nobody else can do that for them.

Canadian Kids are All on Drugs

The number of prescriptions for antipsychotic drugs for kids in Canada more than doubled between 2005 and 2010. A study in the journal Pediatrics & Child Health shows that the number of prescriptions jumped 114 per cent across those years, despite most antipsychotics not being cleared for use in Canada among people younger than 17. The drugs are used to offset the symptoms of attention deficit hyperactive disorder, autism, mood disorders, and all manner of behavioural problems in kids as young as six.

Addiction Specialist Says It’s Easier to Withdraw Patients from Heroin than from Xanax

Between 2004 and 2008 the Centers for Disease Control reported an 89 percent increase in the number of emergency room visits nationwide related to the non-medical use of Xanax and other drugs in its class. According to drug site which reviews the FDA’s adverse events data base, people using Xanax reported more than 11,000 adverse events between 2004 and march of this year. They include 83 deaths, 107 completed suicides and 100 comas. “It’s so much easier to take people off heroin. I’d rather take 100 people off heroin than one person of Xanax because I know they’ll have a year of withdrawal,” says addiction specialist Dr. Jerry Callaway.