Worth Your Read: Doing More Harm Than Good

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/has-the-drug-based-approach-to-mental-illness-failed/

The overuse of pharmaceuticals has been a common subject on this blog.  There is, however, a significant difference between me complaining about it in my personal life, and having good journalism backed up with statistics say the same thing.  

I can complain about the systemic treating of the symptoms, not the problem, until I'm blue in the face, and I will be ignored.  In part because lived experience simply isn't valued when the source is a minority.  But also because people in power do need to look at the larger picture.  

The problem, of course, is that most mainstream media and scientific publications don't care to investigate this sort of thing.  Or if they do, they don't publish it.  And so the heavily flawed, "pound of cure over the ounce of prevention" system that feeds the unending greed of medical corporations continues unchecked.  

Actually, this interview goes one step further and suggests that many psychiatric medications don't even help some people in the short term, which is a rather disturbing thought. Effectively, people are being prescribed biology altering cocktails... for nothing.  

We know, of course, that not all kinds of depression respond to pharmaceuticals. The industry standard term for this is "treatment resistant" depression.  Which is both misleading and inaccurate, because the only treatment they're trying is pills.  Dietary changes, exercise, nutritional interventions, and basic therapy are ignored in this calculation.  

Which, if the person is simply suffering a massive lack of vitamin D (which can cause chronic fatigue and low mood climate, among other things), yeah.  No amount of neurotransmitter tinkering is going to fix that.  Going outside in sunlight on a regular basis, or taking a good quality vitamin D supplement will, though.  Speaking from personal experience here, in fact.  

I particularly liked the section in this interview regarding capitalism.  It says a lot in a very short amount of words, and all of it is right if you ask me.  Many of his proposed improvements are also excellent.  I hope you find this reading this interview as useful as I did.