Overmedication of America

I read a book recently, titled, “Comfortably Numb: How psychiatry is medicating a nation,” by Charles Barber, a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine. Barber contends that Americans are horrendously overdosed in psychiatric medicines, and provides facts and stories to back up his case.

Some quotes from his book:

“In 2006, 227 million antidepressant prescriptions were dispensed to Americans—more than any other class of medication—and up by 30 million prescriptions since 2002.”

“Americans are responsible for almost half of the world’s prescription drug sales….In 2006, Americans—about 6 percent of the world’s population—bought about two-thirds of the world’s psychiatric and neurological drugs. In 2006, 66 percent of the global antidepressant market was accounted for by the United States.”

“To say that we are the most medicated nation on earth is an absurd understatement. To say that we are the most psychiatrically medicated nation on earth is a prodigiously absurd understatement.”

Barber is not arguing that the medicines should be done away with, but that Americans are putting too much faith in them. He gives examples of how advertising campaigns lull consumers into believing doses of these drugs are healthy for them, when quite the opposite is true. He also contends that Americans are sanitizing themselves with drugs to avoid dealing with the highs and lows of human experience. They are practicing a form of escapism rather than working life's problems out constructively.

He wrote:

“It has been widely observed that the SSRIs [form of antidepressant drug] put many people at a sort of remove from reality, a distance from the self. I’ve seen SSRIs block out both the good and the bad, numbing us to the pandemonium of life….The emotional highs and lows are excised from experience, and one exists in a slightly foggy middle ground….They function; they don’t get too excited or too upset. They get by. They come to inhabit an inauthentic and less challenging existence and embrace a uniquely American form of emotional sanitation.”

This last observation is what I have noted in people on antidepressant drugs. They are not themselves anymore. They are drugged into a state of semi-individuality that loses touch with reality.

Of course, there is a need to help people out of depressive states of mind that cause them to struggle, and healing is possible through prayer and spiritual treatment of thought. There is one Mind, and it’s a happy healthy Mind which everyone is divinely designed to express.

Heavy and dark states of mortal mind may seem to weigh that joy down for a spell in the human mind, but it cannot endure. Christ is ever-present in human consciousness helping each individual find the light that brings genuine joy back into their experience.

Barber still advocates medicine for severe depression, mostly because he knows no other way to cope with it. He’s willing to compromise on the tough cases. But for the most part, he encourages his readers to deal with life’s realities rather than trying to avoid them through drugging.

Amen!

Americans are way too overmedicated. Books like this help snap lulled consumers out of complacency and acquiescence to ever-increasing doses of medicine that do great harm and avoid dealing with the real issues of life through logic, reason and spirituality.

Everyone has a right to live an authentic life! But it won’t be found in a drugged-up state of mind. It’s found through spiritual growth, increased spirituality and consecrated prayer.