Antidepressants Using Arise In The United States

By Author: tanya
Total Articles: 119
Comment this article

Americans now are medicated Americans. Drugs cannot depart from our life. Antidepressants have become the third-most commonly prescribed medications in the US. There are 11 percent of women and 5 percent of men who are taking antidepressants. Americans are popping more antidepressants than ever before to deal with everyday stress, and non-psychiatrists are increasingly willing to prescribe the drugs to patients with no mental health diagnosis, a new study finds.

Antidepressants such as Prozac, Paxil and Lexapro are now the third most widely prescribed group of drugs in the United States. It appears that physicians may be prescribing antidepressants for more mild forms of mood and anxiety disorders, or for isolated psychiatric symptoms like sleep disturbance, nervousness or nonspecific pain, Doctor Olfson said. The study authors said the increases don't necessarily mean that the drugs are being used inappropriately, but it's necessary to understand why antidepressant use is growing and, if necessary, to develop policies that ensure patients get the most effective treatment.

Several factors may have contributed ...
... to this trend, including a broadening in concepts of need for mental-health treatment, campaigns to promote mental healthcare, and growing public acceptance of mental-health treatments. By contrast, prescriptions for antidepressants for patients with diagnoses, such as major or chronic depression increased by 44 percent, a much smaller increase. In general medicine practice, antidepressant use was concentrated among people with less severe and poorly defined mental health condition, based on an assessment of “physician practice-level trends in antidepressant visits without psychiatric diagnosis.

Antidepressants have been demonstrated to be clinically effective for only a limited number of psychiatric conditions: major depressive disorder, chronic depression, some anxiety disorders, and a few other well-defined conditions. Some research has shown that withdrawal from antidepressants after many years "is not pleasant.

This finding calls for a more targeted and selective approach in public-information campaigns aimed at improving public understanding of the proper uses of psychiatric medications.
Information about Zoloft Lawsuit and Zoloft Lawsuit claims 2011 are supplied here in
Zoloft Lawsuit Claims Center.