Defined Terms   Business Plan   Invitation Letter   Attachment    SWOT Analysis 

3.VI.(a)  Jiggling neuro transmitters with anti-depressants doesn't allow anxiety suffers to learn from their bout of a normal mental illness to harden their resolve against further mental illness

Psychosis that is symptomatic of schizophrenia is often successfully treated with antipsychotic medications and psychosocial therapy to bring psychotic symptoms under control and into remission.

As distinct from antipsychotic medications to treat the sever illness of psychosis, people taking Eli Lilly's Prozac, Pfizer's Zoloft 'et al' for the standard illness of Depression, which 1 in 5 Australian adults experience at some time in the lives, has materially increased recently, ostensibly due to -

(i)         the proliferation of these prescriptions;

(ii)        some general practitioners consider that they have no other treatment they can offer;

(iii)       many patients possess a mindset that their doctor will have a pill to fix them;

(iv)       the pressures of a working life in a global economy, where shrunken margins, due to China, India etc delivering 50% of our consumables, has created additional pressures on most of us which correlate to keeping your head above water; and

(v)        the Recreational Drug Use many of us consume daily - coffee, nicotine, alcohol etc to crank-up or wind-down our stressors.

Re (i) above, several multi-national drug companies have been the beneficiary of this more recent phenomenon.  No doubt these will contend that the power of their drugs to settle neurotransmitters has been as beneficial as the discovery of penicillin.  A lot of adults who have taken anti-depressants, and their friends/family that evidenced the effects, may contend that popping pills didn't teach the depressed person how to overcome and become stronger after experiencing the universal phenomena of a bout of anxiety and/or Depression.

Michael  D. Yapko Ph.D. internationally respected book, Breaking the Patterns of Depression succinctly describes this complex illness as:

Most depressed people think, feel and act out of a depressive perspective that is distorted and hurtful, and then make the mistake of actually believing this perspective is a God-given truth.

Pharmacist Gail Bell's quarterly essay The Worried Well: The Depression Epidemic and the Medicalisation of our Sorrows dated 27 June 2005 -

(i)         raises concerns that jiggling neuro transmitters in the brain with drugs where the long-term effects may not be known without a support network; and

(ii)        asserts it is often not enough because the depressed person returns to the lifestyle out of which the depression developed.

Australian, Rebekah Beddoe's, recently released book "Dying for a Cure: A memoir of antidepressants, misdiagnosis and madness" provides a personal account of an ambitious, successful career woman who was prescribed anti-depressants after being diagnosed with post natal depression.  Rebekah rapidly transformed into a chronic psychiatric patient.  Two years after being prescribed an SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor) by her GP, Rebekah was taking six different drugs, including lithium, a tranquilliser, an antipsychotic, and anti-depressants.  She had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder; given electric-shock therapy; made numerous attempts on her life; and was alternately manic and consumed by crippling despair during which she could barely move. 

Another legacy is Type 1 Diabetes.  Rebekah's book, Dying for a Cure, and listening to her lucid, coherent accounts when interviewed on ABC Radio in early January '07 is patent testimony that not all people suffering a bout of Depression can take an SSRI, and others should not without an effective support network.  Yet 12 million SSRI's are prescribed annually in Australia.

Essays like Gail Bell's The Worried Well and Rebekah Beddoe's book Dying for a Cure are testaments that anti-depressants, without a sturdy support network often render the ill person materially worse off, particularly people who were experiencing Depression.