Google News alerts is one of my primary tools for keeping up with what is happening the world of mental health. Earlier this week, it coughed up this article:
Use of Antidepressant Medications Common Among People With No Psychiatric Illness: Presented at CPA
The authors of the study surveyed over 20,000 people prescribed who had been prescribed an antidepressant and assessed for the presence of symptoms validating a the diagnosis for which they were allegedly being treated. They found
An analysis of the results showed that among individuals who reported using an antidepressant in the previous year, more than 50% did not meet criteria for any of the diagnoses assessed. The researchers also found that these individuals were significantly more likely to be older, white, and female compared with those who took antidepressants and who also met criteria for a 12-month diagnosis and those who neither had a 12-month diagnosis nor took antidepressants.
More than half, the majority, of those who were prescribed antidepressants did not meet the criteria for the diagnosis! And that doesn't even address the fact that the criteria and number of possible diagnostic categories have been expanded dramatically. There would be a great hue and cry if more than half of the people prescribed insulin were found not to be diabetic, but this study caused not even a ripple.
In recent weeks studies have reported that these medications perform only slightly better than placebo, if that, and now that they are prescribed absent indicators for them. Yet the scripts continue to be written. Patents continue to take them and even believe they must do so for the rest of their lives.
Also note that most of those who did not meet the diagnostic criteria were: older, white, and female
Whose interests does it serve for these women to believe themselves ill and in need of medication to manage their lives?
I keep asking myself what this means.