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1 in 4 American women on psychiatric medication
- Thread starter Joel Was Right
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lol
You don't think taking a drug consistently at an early age can affect your body/mind and cause side effects? I'm not saying it's the sole reason, I'm sure there are plenty of factors for women, but so many women are on birth control, men certainly aren't.
Doctors at academic facilities often time also do research on top of their clinical duties. But the statement that all doctors are scientists or all doctors aren't are both incorrect. Good doctors however should be using evidence based practice developed and peer reviewed by the medical community to generate a "Standard of care".
How many years of nutrition training do doctors get in med school? Do you really think 1 in 4 women in this country should be on these types of meds?
How many years of nutrition training have you had?
BruiserBear
Banned
Um, a google search?
Regarding chemical imbalances.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_imbalance
Generally those physiological arousals are met with fear though, which in turn keeps those feeling alive, and makes them stronger. In time people often learn to fear their return, thus increasing their frequency, and thus entering a cycle of anxiety.
Regarding the chemical imbalance topic. See above.
So if you felt or experienced no fear, what aspect of these events "destroyed your emotional well being"?
Whew, that wikipedia article sure set me straight. You realize you sound like the phony self-help specialist from Donnie Darko, right?
Dice
Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
The fact that I could not be comfortable. Did you not read any of my stories?
You didn't answer the question, not shocked that you don't know the answer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietitian
But no, you probably know better because your vitamins make you feel grrrrrreat!
Perhaps it could, I really don't know.
I don't believe that birth control is the issue here though.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/health/16chen.html?_r=1
Nice link, but Wikipedia is not a valid source, and I didn't ask you about dietitians, I asked you about medical doctors. You still haven't answered the question because you can't. You don't have the knowledge.
I'm certainly in better shape than you are in my mid 30's, my girlfriend is 23, I'd say yeah I feel pretty good. Thanks
probably 4 weeks total at best but definitely spread out over our 2 years of classwork. Nutrition specialist are called dieticians and when a doctor needs help with nutrition advice for their patients they should be consulting them. I know we do pretty frequently. We've also started supplementing nutrition most notably vitamin D as there have been new research talking about the effects of low vitamin D worsening mood.
replicashooter
Banned
No they don't. The vast majority of them sell what the reps tell them to push in order to be entered into the "free prize draw for a cruise with the wife" that they all seem to win each year.
hey_it's_that_dog
benevolent sexism
Infinite years because abnormality is part of the definition of mental illness.
Doctors aren't trained in every field because they literally cannot be trained in every field. That's why there's this really neat process they can follow where they direct you to another doctor that specializes in a form of medicine that you require. This can be one of many different specialities, like gastro-intestinal pathologies, neurology, oncology or nutrition.
It's called a referral. I suppose you bypassed all that with a multi-vitamin though, so congrats on solving the worlds' psychological problems??
:lol
Ela Hadrun
Probably plays more games than you
How "helpful" of you!
My point is that the study fails the basic "How many piano tuners are there in Chicago" test. One in five non-elderly women in America are uninsured. Medicaid (another 10% of non-elderly women) usually does not cover outpatient mental health services. Many employer-based health plans do not cover outpatient mental health. That's at least a third of women who, if they are on meds, are paying for it out of pocket.
So that means that about a third of well-insured middle-class and wealthy women ages 18-64 are taking psych meds (unless the ACTUAL truth of the study is that elderly women on Medicare, which DOES cover outpatient mental health, are taking shitloads of psych meds, which is certainly possible, but not really the same as "1 in 4 American women").
So I thought about populations that would have a high incidence of psych med usage, such as families with severe mental illness history like my own, or substance abuse survivors (on this point, I wonder if a lot of incarcerated women are on psych meds, and/or if the study considered incarcerated women at all). Those populations could easily be large enough to tip out the balance back towards a "1 in 4" percentage.
But if that were the case, there would be no reason to write an article about it. Treating serious mental illness and serious addiction are things that psychiatric medications should be doing.
So I have to conclude that either the article is considering "American Women" to mean "women with disposable income, maybe from just this one Chicago suburb we sampled," or else they are reporting the explosion of consciously recreational psych med usage as identical to therapeutically-intentioned use (overprescription, placebo effect, etc included). Plenty of people who don't need Xanax, Ritalin, what have you are taking them; and no one including their doctors really thinks they need it.
Who is "us"? You had only posted to shoot down another post without contributing anything of your own to the thread when I posted. You've done that again twice and only just now made a post with any real content (which was still used to "help" another poster). There is no reason to believe I was addressing a group of people that included you.
But this post was. I laid out my reasoning. That's what helping somebody understand something ACTUALLY looks like.
Dice
Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
Not all of them are chronic. It would make sense for understanding our ourselves to eventually progress to a point where we are actively aware of our biological and psychological condition and moderate it through a variety of means to maintain an optimal state. At least, that is the vision of transhumanism. As for how many years that will take... who knows? It depends on how well we can clear bullshit blockades from people who don't know anything so proper scientific research and advancements can be made.
Devolution
Member
You mean the gender that has more chemical changes in their body and brain might need more medication to deal with it? Or the gender that's least likely to get medical help will be less on psychiatric medication despite being more violent and sociopathic?
Huh.
Huh.
Did you even read the article I posted from the New York Times written by a medical doctor on how much nutritional training they are given? And, if these doctors are not properly trained because in your words they can't be why are they then doling out drugs to 1 in 4 women if they don't have all the proper knowledge? You can rip on vitamins, minerals, anti oxidants, and pretty much whatever you want, but if you think a nutrient deficient body is one that will perform well you simply again don't have the knowledge. But good luck to ya on that fast food diet.
hey_it's_that_dog
benevolent sexism
"Chemical imbalance" is a vague, potentially non-scientific term. I can get on board with that. I can appreciate the skepticism. My claim is merely that biology can affect mental health, and that we cannot control every aspect of our biology.
Perhaps notably, the Wikipedia article says:
Yes, pharmaceutical companies take advantage of the term "chemical imbalance" and the public's lack of scientific literacy, but that fact does not prove that the "chemical imbalance" framework is wrong, just that it should be viewed skeptically. (And viewing something skeptically does not necessarily entail dismissing it.)
ReBurn
Gold Member
Wait, are both of those the same gender? Or different genders? I'm not very good at this.
The article is apt, but doesn't have any relevance because as I and Buttchin have both explained, part of being a doctor involves consulting and referring. For the same reason a neurologist would be ill-equipped to examine you for dermatitis, if you have questions about nutrition, you should be visiting a dietitian. If your doctor isn't giving you the referrals you suspect he should, perhaps you should find another doctor.
BruiserBear
Banned
I'm not concerned with your assessment.
Yes, I read all of it. It sounds like classic anxiety to me. I've experienced all of the things you described, and many more. Anxiety presents itself in many ways. I'll just leave you with this.
I saw a counselor in 2009 for about 4 months. Didn't feel any better from it. Then one day, while researching stuff online, I found out about Claire Weekes. She was an Australian doctor who really pioneered anxiety research in the 60's. She was exceptionally knowledgeable on the subject, and wrote many books, and was given many honors for her work. Her first book pretty much got it all right though, and it's the only one I've bought.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0451167228/?tag=neogaf0e-20
She also has an audio CD I highly recommend.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1565119703/?tag=neogaf0e-20
Keep in mind both that book and the audio are from the 60's. She died in 1990. So you're going to have to get over her old fashioned vocabulary, and way of describing things. But, underneath her old fashioned vibe, you will find the best description and dissection of anxiety out there. She lays out how anxiety works, piece by piece, and how it is overcome. She even added an additional epilogue which is included with this version of her book, where she directly talks about the new age of medications (SSRIs), and why she believes they're being over prescribed (in 1990) lol. She wrote that epilogue in 1990, shortly before her death. I found her words profoundly enlightening. Reading that book, and listening to that CD were like a magician explaining a grand mystery that had befuddled me for years. It changed my life. I haven't had a panic attack since 2009.
Devolution
Member
The first gender is women. The second gender is men.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/health/16chen.html?_r=1
It's kind of funny how you point out the Vitamin D research. Vitamin D is very important as are many vitamins and minerals, people are just clueless on their value in maintaining health and mood. Instead, prescribing medications seems to be the most popular thing because Science says so.
My issue is that doctors prescribe the depression meds, and they are the ones that aren't trained enough on the value of nutrition. Instead it's you must have a chemical imbalance. 1 in 4 will certainly go higher and higher as the years go by; it's sad really.
But that isn't what happens, you don't go to a doctor because of depression and get referred to a nutritionist. Instead you get put on anti depressants, and there is the problem. If some of these doctors were better trained in things like nutrition maybe we wouldn't see 1 in 4 women on depression/mood/anxiety meds? Just sayin.
hey_it's_that_dog
benevolent sexism
Look how much smarter you sound now. See, I did help.
To actually contribute something you might find worthy, I tried to find the original report that is being cited to look at their methodology, but couldn't. It's somewhere in a report from Medco Health Solutions.
ReBurn
Gold Member
Thank you. That's what I thought, but I didn't want to make assumptions.
You ever been to a psychiatrist or are you just assuming that this is the way things work?
perhaps we should get into exactly why that second gender might be less likely to seek medical assistance. Or why the former gender is so prone to it beyond merely chemical change. something something gendered narratives something something psychological wellbeing.
I'm going to take a page from BruiserBear's book and say fear.
BruiserBear
Banned
I don't dismiss it. I've already said in this thread that I'm fully behind people who are suicidal taking an SSRI. I also agree that medications should be used for those who are schizophrenic.
I'm not anti psych meds. I'm just anti meds for 1/4 of the population. That's where we are today. Seems a bit insane, no?
Devolution
Member
Probably should. If women are seeking help and getting it, there's no shame in these numbers. The shame is in the amount of men who refuse to do so and commit violent crimes or shoot up places when they should have gotten some therapy/medical assistance for those anger issues. Men are the most likely to commit suicide and shoot up a school/workplace. Seems to me women aren't the "Crazy" ones, they're getting help for their problems. Men need to be doing the same.
Ela Hadrun
Probably plays more games than you
Bruiser, I'm glad that you found a solution that worked for you, but it doesn't automatically generalize to everyone. Brains are complicated as fuck. And trauma is complicated as fuck.
I had a friend who overcame some mild OCD in a similar way that you describe overcoming your anxiety: breaking down processes, rational-emotive strategy, willpower. But not everyone has the same causes underlying their behaviors and not everyone has similar brains.
In particular, there are a bunch (not a majority by any means) of kids out there with anxiety issues because they have an abusive or neglectful parent, or because they lost a parent in any of the ways a kid can lose a parent. Those kids don't have the ability to scrutinize their thought processes the same way that we do, and a good therapist (ALSO not a majority by any means lol) can do a lot for those kids.
But I mean, that doesn't really have anything to do with Xanax, as you and I both agree that those kids don't really have any business being on meds unless they are an immediate consistent danger to themselves or others.
I had a friend who overcame some mild OCD in a similar way that you describe overcoming your anxiety: breaking down processes, rational-emotive strategy, willpower. But not everyone has the same causes underlying their behaviors and not everyone has similar brains.
In particular, there are a bunch (not a majority by any means) of kids out there with anxiety issues because they have an abusive or neglectful parent, or because they lost a parent in any of the ways a kid can lose a parent. Those kids don't have the ability to scrutinize their thought processes the same way that we do, and a good therapist (ALSO not a majority by any means lol) can do a lot for those kids.
But I mean, that doesn't really have anything to do with Xanax, as you and I both agree that those kids don't really have any business being on meds unless they are an immediate consistent danger to themselves or others.
Steve Youngblood
Member
I'm not really sure what the takeaway is. Pardon my ignorance if the link seeks to answer my concern, however, when I hear this stat, I'm not really sure why I'm supposed to automatically get alarmed. Having never taken psychiatric medication, what's the general consensus on the efficacy of such medication relative to the side effects? Because if it's relatively safe and effective, I'm not sure why 25% usage is a terrifying number.
Now, if they're perceived as a dangerous last-ditch tool for treating only the most seriously depressed people, then that's a little scary.
As such, again, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to react to this news.
Now, if they're perceived as a dangerous last-ditch tool for treating only the most seriously depressed people, then that's a little scary.
As such, again, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to react to this news.
planar1280
Banned
25% of women, how many is that? 20-30 million women?
Ela Hadrun
Probably plays more games than you
Oh, good thing there was a man around to be unable to understand me!
Ehhh the stuff you are stating isn't even legal anymore. And yes working at an academic center affiliated with a university the attendings and residents for that mater are often heavily involved with research and its not affiliated directly with drug companies short of sometimes the drug companies will provide the drugs for free during the study. But it was still the developers of the studies that ultiamtely came up with which medications to include in the study. When this happens however it is noted in the study itself.. You are seriously making accusations that aren't remotely true anymore. In the past however you would've had a better case.
ReBurn
Gold Member
I was on Cymbalta for about two years and I'm still embarrassed by it. But looking back I sure did need something, and the stuff worked.
My issue with that article is that it's like demanding that all engineers of all types must learn electrical engineering because basically everything runs on electricity today.
Also, I feel as though your beefs are misdirected. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but i reckon even if they were knowledgeable it's still profitable to push pills instead.
timetokill
Banned
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the statistic was that more men succeed at suicide, but more women attempt it.
In that case, couldn't it be that women still aren't getting enough treatment?
aside from the fact that violent outburst isn't the only way to demonstrate inappropriate social behaviour it seems like you're making a vast oversimplification of what it will take to get men to treat their psychological health more seriously merely in order to seem pithy.
One could also argue from that that women are more often using the inappropriate method of self-harm in order to gain attention or as a "cry for help" while men more often actually want to end their lives.
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