A fascinating insight
http://davidhealy.org/the-pill-that-steals-lives
Are we medicating people for the right reasons. Is medication always the answer.
Surely anger, sadness, anxiety, happiness, laughter, depression are all part of the cocktail of human emotions and are reactions to situations. Surely childhood is about developing a tool box of coping strategies for situations. Anti-depressants definitely have a place as a short term fix, but is it right that we have 1 in 5 people on Anti-depressants in some of the most highly populated cities.
Do anti- depressants really answer the questions?
What horrendous side effects do they have – headaches/ stomach? What are they doing to your insides? To your personality? Are you as loving now as before – do you get as happy?
Do you have to take other medication to protect other parts of your body?
And then when you feel worse – they say – “wow you really are depressed, maybe we need to up the dose ….”
“You are lucky” I hear people say that you have not experienced depression – no I have never let depression take hold. I have had happy times and sad times, I have had break ups and lost jobs, and felt a financial burden, but i have learnt the things that balance the “downs” in my life. I was brought up slightly with a “grunt up and get on with it mentality” which when you are down can feel like no one cares and ones sadness is swept under the carpet – but in retrospect this gave me a healthy balance – go and do something nice and fun if you are feeling down. And here lies the problem, many people cannot remember what they did for fun, they don’t have time/money/people to do things with.
So then we get to the bigger problem – are you living your life or are you living someone else’s?
What did you do as a child that made your heart sing – that you loved – that made you laugh/smile/ be happy?
What was it about that that you you loved?
What of that are you not getting or doing now?
These questions are the answer to the way out.
Looking at having fun, not over burdening oneself with things one cannot solve, manage.
Normal conditions such as shyness, worry, fear of public speaking are becoming conditions.
These are human behaviours, they should be managed by overcoming them not with drugs. Drugs mask the situation and dull it rather than solve it – the problem is still there but left in the “can’t cope with that basket”. I am sure those of you reading this who have taken or do take anti depressants will try to tell me that it is an illness and that you simply cannot get up and move on – and i agree – I think NOW you cannot – but back then when this first started – that first “down moment” – if you had had better skills to deal with that time, maybe just maybe now you would be ok.
Food for thought – great read by someone with first hand experience and a lot of research and medical knowledge in it as well.
But shocking truths like – when medicine is tested do they report all the results – so 50% success rate – or do they say this was successful on 100 people and ignore the fact that 100 others it was unsuccessful with. I will leave you to google and investigate that – i know what the answer to that question is!!
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