Psych Drugs Gaining Widespread Acceptance – Study Shows Growing Number of Americans Like Them?

This study certainly is interesting with publishing some consumer perceptions and the change of paradigms of where we have moved on with less effort on psychotherapy and just tossing a pill at a patient instead of working through the process of healing through self realization. As stated, the old way, which in my opinion still needs to be available by all means, is not cost effective. So have we abandoned working out issues with counseling and other psychiatric methodologies in favor of popping a pill?

The study also looked the effect of advertising with patients asking for medication by brand name, so if this is not an example of successful advertising and branding, I don’t know what is. We also have more items to diagnose today that fall into mental illness areas, such as restless leg syndrome, which is still questioned by many on whether it is a real disease or syndrome and leads many to question some of the diseases in mental illness, are they real or created at times to help market selected drugs. The numbers are big, five times the use of antidepressants.

Also, we are also learning about the side effects, so sometimes the cure may be more complicated than the diagnosis when all this is taken into account. The study also wanted to find out if the black box warnings with side effects warnings were having any impact. When you see a commercial with happy people enjoying life and smiling ear to ear over and over, well some of that gets stuck inside our brains somewhere along the line and maybe we forget that the black box warnings are there, so you could be happy and smiling on the outside, but your liver could very well be frowning on the inside. BD

FRIDAY, July 31 (HealthDay News) -- A growing number of Americans now have a positive opinion on psychiatric medications, a new study contends.

About five out of six people surveyed felt psychiatric medications could help people control psychiatric symptoms, but many also expected the medications could help people deal with day-to-day stresses, help them feel better about themselves and make things easier with family and friends.

"People's attitudes regarding psychiatric medications became more favorable between 1998 and 2006," said study author Dr. Ramin Mojtabai, an associate professor in the department of mental health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

Between 1990 and 2000, he said, the use of antidepressants increased fivefold. Another reason is that the government has allowed direct-to-consumer advertising for the drugs. And finally, he said that he wanted to learn if the recent FDA black box warnings on some antidepressants and antipsychotics had any effect on people's opinions of these drugs.

Mojtabai said that advertising may have helped increased people's positive perceptions of these drugs. But, he added, there is also an increasing awareness that many psychiatric disorders have a biological or organic cause that medications may be able to help correct. Today, psychotherapy often isn't affordable, and the nature of treating symptoms has shifted toward medications. When these drugs work -- for anxiety, insomnia, depression, mania -- they can be miraculous for that person. But, none of them work universally."