Antidepressant use continues to rise in a world that seems easier on the pill than on finding the real problem and solving it.
In 2004, the Medicines Agency carried out a study in which it made it clear that the consumption of antidepressants had tripled in the world. At that time we still had to suffer a global recession, which was made worse by the pandemic that the World Health Organization pulled out of its sleeve and which plunged us all, it seemed, into a mental health problem that only seems to be we will go out be able to get rid of with permanent medication.
Antidepressants, easy prescription
To stick to Spain and compare data, in 1994 7,285,182 containers of antidepressants were sold in our country, in 1999 (five years later) 14,555,311 and in 2003 21,238,858 containers were prescribed. If we multiply this by the number of pills in each package, hundreds of millions of pills were put into circulation in the national market without excessive control.
In the year 2021, when we all become mentally ill, more than 50 million packs were put into circulation.
For Jose Luis Quintana, family doctor, “the problem is that there is a probable abuse of antidepressants.” Another of the most prescribed medications are anxiolytics, which are administered by Social Security without convincingly warning us of the possible risks. In many cases, we are even administered both drugs without an assessment of the possible side effects. Today it is clear that our cognitive system is affected and that, especially in people of a certain age, motor functions can even be compromised.
It is not a surprise that already in 2004, july bobesProfessor of Psychiatry at the University of Oviedo, happily affirms that “the greater degree of continuous training of health personnel has contributed to the early identification of mental disorders and even to a better management of psychotropic drugs”.
Nowadays you grow your beard, you mess up your hair and you go to your GP with a somber look on your face, you have a coffee to keep your blood pressure up and you tell him some negative story about your life, which doesn’t have to be. be true, and automatically you will. get a diagnosis of depression, for which you will be prescribed an interesting package for which you should not read the instructions. Perhaps because among the negative effects, it is very likely to state that the product can lead to depression. The whiting that bites its tail means that in the contraindications of the pills that are given for depression you find yourself with the same mental illness that you supposedly want to fight.
Some days ago, Alejandro Sanza global music star, wrote the following on Twitter, which set off alarm bells around the world:
I’m not well. I don’t know if this helps, but I want to say it. I am sad and tired. In case anyone else thinks that there always has to be a sea breeze or fireworks on a summer night. I’m working on it… I’ll get to the stage…,
Mental health began to be talked about in the news, on talk shows, and filled the pages of newspapers and radio programs on the subject. I am also tired and there are days when I don’t feel the sea breeze, nor the jellyfish, nor the mermaids, so what?
Being sad has become enough to get drugs (antidepressants)
The pharmaceutical industries have gained handsomely when we confuse a normal state of mind – not every day is the same – with depression or mental illness. Ramón Sánchez Ocaña, one of the best-known science journalists of the turn of the century, wrote in his book El Universo de las drogas, published by Planeta:
Antidepressants, as the name suggests, are substances designed to combat depression. Normally, its unwanted effects are associated with drowsiness, slow reflexes, loss of attention, a tendency to gain weight… The problem is that they can be abused to counteract a situation of sadness, or, as has been recently suggested, to cope with a difficult situation. Some antidepressants are known as “the shy pill.” There is a risk, in today’s medicalized society, of believing that you always have to be in tune and therefore, if you are not, you can resort to the chemical help of a drug”.
Antidepressants, violence and murder
Was Sanchez Ocana who wrote the above in 2004. A year earlier, at the end of August 2003, in Spain, the lieutenant colonel and psychologist Rafael Gil de la Haza56 years old, who worked in the psychiatric ward of the San Carlos de Cádiz military hospital, killed his 12 year old daughterAna Gil Cordero, with a shot and then another to commit suicide. The only thing that everyone articulated to say was “what would go through his head”.
But while I was under the effect of a psychotropic treatment, all agreed that he had been taciturn for several days, withdrawn into himself and that he loved his daughter in an exaggerated way. Why did all the tools at his disposal fail? Nothing, not even psychiatry is infallible. In fact, I would venture to say that it is hardly infallible.
A few days before the lieutenant colonel and psychologist killed his daughter, in Madrid, the Civil Guard arrested a woman who, according to the EFE news agency: …had killed her one-month-old baby at her home in Las Rozas (Madrid). , and that she had to be taken to a hospital to be treated for the psychiatric disorder she suffers from.
Mainstream media silenced
One of the issues that I miss in this type of news is that there is never a way to clearly know what type of psychotropic drugs you are taking and if there is a link between your consumption and the homicidal ideas that trigger certain tragic events.
To conclude, allow me, in this small approach to the world of antidepressants and their consequences, to echo what Jose CarrionProfessor of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Murcia (UMU), wrote in November 2017 in the newspaper La Verdad, in a magisterial column entitled “Depression as an intelligent alarm”:
Antidepressants, the use of which is based on the idea of altered brain neurochemistry, promote psychiatric intervention, although science has shown its weaknesses. Few people report being cured with antidepressants, which I’m assuming doesn’t take away their goodness in rare, life-threatening circumstances. But it happens that many people become dependent, and in some cases attract unpleasant side effects, even serious illnesses. A single dose of antidepressants can change the architecture of the brain for almost three hours, creating disturbances in our army of neurotransmitters and a physiological cascade that engulfs everything. Nothing of much interest to the pharmaceutical companies, which with their thousands of commissioned lobbyists finance more than 70% of the FDA’s trials, taking control of purchasing, sales, research, publications and media..
And last but not least, filmmaker Roberto Manciero, who, with five Emmy Awards from the Academy of Arts, Sciences and Television, decided to reveal in a documentary titled Prescription: Suicide? the experiences of six children between the ages of 9 and 16 “who, after taking antidepressants, tried to commit suicide”. A truly amazing documentary, which premiered in 1998 in the United States, the country that, along with Spain, consumes most of these types of pills, does not leave the viewer indifferent.
Bibliography:
Drug data: the consumption of antidepressants grows by 40% (rtve.es)
DSalud nº 88 (1998)
ABC 12/27/2004 (Society)
The Opinion of Murcia 08/27/2013 (Events)
The World 01/09/2013 (Chronicle)
Originally published at LaDamadeElche.com
