Comfortably Numb
Jan 28th, 2008 at 11:29 am by Susie
When the profit motive rules medicine, doctors don’t have time to see what’s wrong with their patients and it’s a lot easier to write a prescription to “treat” it. You know, I was pretty depressed myself, what with serial layoffs and no health insurance, but I don’t think there’s anything a pill could have done to fix that. Yet I was offered anti-depressants and tranquilizers almost every time I did make it to a doctor:
Sometime in the 1990s, the concept of better living through chemistry turned a corner, thanks to drug companies’ efforts to synthesize antidotes for every possible mood swing. So writes Yale lecturer Charles Barber in his new book, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation. An OCD sufferer himself, Barber spent a decade working in places like New York City’s Bellevue Hospital. He knew something was wrong when he discovered that his colleagues’ perfectly functional, $300-an-hour Upper West Side clients were taking the same potent pills as his own schizoid, homeless, crackhead patients. “I would spend part of the day in shelters dealing with seriously ill people,” Barber says. “Then I’d go to cocktail parties and find out that the people there were on the same medications.” He proposes that we just say no to multinational drug peddlers and heal ourselves with cognitive and dialectical behavioral therapies — “talk therapy” techniques that minimize pill pushing, dispense with Freudian dream analysis, and engage patients in actively reprogramming their own brains. It’s like “a highly selective carpentry of the soul,” Barber writes — therapy as self-engineering.
He does acknowledge the need for medication in the hardest cases. Just like cancer, severe mood disorders can be life-threatening and should be treated as such, Barber says. But we need to distinguish between real depression and just being bummed out.
Also worth noting that according to my mom, who works as a medical writer for big pharma, they have to severely alter their marketing plans in Europe, where it’s actually considered unethical to give gifts to doctors. Evidently no doctor in Europe would be caught dead with one of those fancy prescription drug pens. So they actually have to sell efficacy, not relationships/bribes.
Not like that could ever happen here or anything. Just food for thought.
I believe an appropriate response to the state of affairs today would be depression.
I hate going to doctors. No time to see me, no time to talk to me, whatever I say goes in one ear and out the other, and they all look at me like I’m probably just another one of those almost-menopausal hysterical wimmin anyway.
I stay away unless I need antibiotics (which are getting harder to come by, since I’m allergic to almost all of them now), and as for the depression I’ve fought since I was a little girl, well, the HMO shut down the behavioral sciences clinic, so here! have a pill!
No thanks. I’d rather deal with it myself than be the zombie that the pill guarantees.
I finally did see my dr (who is great) for depression because it was getting really overwhelming. Got a blood test and found out I was seriously anemic, which causes depression (as well as other things). So I say see a doc if you are depressed and as for a blood test (could also be a thyroid problem).
Definitely, drugs are designed to treat hard-hitting diseases. But then again, pharmaceuticals have gone to the extent of using their overwhelming influence on the healthcare industry to pursue their least noble intentions. It’s amazing to learn that some people are made to take antidepressants without really a clear diagnosis of the condition. Like you said “we need to distinguish between real depression and just being bummed out.” Thus, if you’re just bummed out, you shouldn’t be tinkering with SSRI drugs/antidepressants. Depression has a biological factor and that one needs treatment. In case you are diagnosed with depression of the organic nature, think first before getting into antidepressants and be wary of the side effects. If you want a milder but sustainable treatment, get those standardized herbal supplement that have been formulated with the therapeutic extracts of St. John’s Wort and Passiflora.
when my fiancee broke up with me in 1997, under the worst possible circumstances (we lived together and worked together, and the guy who i caught her with would come into the restaurant where we worked every day to make goo-goo eyes at her and glare at me), i started going for counseling.
The first doctor, on the first day I met him, told me I was a “marijuana addict” and prescribed me Ativan (they tried to get me on Prozac too). The Ativan would give me abrupt crying jags as it wore off so they told me to cut the pills in half.
I eventually told them to get fucked.
As a nicotine addict who’s decided to quit (again) and wanting a chance at success, I made an appointment with my physician to get a script for that recently worked with my brother. When I called on Friday morning I was told I could get in on Monday. I was then called later and told that, since I hadn’t been in to the office in 3 years (I don’t get sick), I would have to be treated as a new patient and the next appointment would be April. I’m really pissed. It’s like the phone company or the credit card company; if you don’t use their services often as they want you get penalized.
“He proposes that we just say no to multinational drug peddlers and heal ourselves with cognitive and dialectical behavioral therapies”
Sure, that’s a great idea…but who is going to pay for it? The ugly truth is that most people probably turn to anti-depressants instead of therapy because insurance will actually pay for pills. I think a lot of people use medication as a stop-gap solution when they get desperate and cannot afford the “talking cure”.
MDs are chemical dispensers, that’s what they do. For most of them, their livelihood is tied directly to their ability to write prescriptions.