1/4 Americans on them for a Mental illness; US population uses 60% world's Psychotropic drugs

www.wnd.com...

Some 23% Americans are on drugs for their mental illness, and Americans are accountable for a whooping 60% of the whole world's usage!

A bit surprising to me, because last I checked, individual countries like China and India each have a population of almost FIVE TIMES as much as US population, each.



What if the drug supply to these 1 in 4 Americans was suddenly reduced or cut off because of a national disaster, or the like?

gardener
What if the drug supply to these 1 in 4 Americans was suddenly reduced or cut off because of a national disaster, or the like?

Probably a great number of these drugs are for ADD or ADHD which are over diagnosed anyways.
That's my guess.

The over-diagnosed may wake when if a SHTF situation made it so they have none.

One fourth may be enough to medicate the rest of the population in areas through city tap water, bottled from tap sources, etc.

Although government officials and scientists are in no rush to look into this potential threat, some environmentalists are becoming worried. In a preliminary study at the University of Idaho, fathead minnows were plunked in water spiked with a combination of SSRIs and anticonvulsants—a lab version of American tap water. After swimming in the contaminated water for 18 days, the minnows exhibited 324 genetic alterations associated with human neurological disorders, including autism.

One source

reply to post by gardener


You really need to take this sort of report with a grain of salt. If you read it through it basically says 130 million people are either on drugs or alcoholics. That's more than a third of the entire population, including kids.

Ask yourself if that's true. Really? Somebody has their statistics in a wad here. One thing you learn when doing statistics and spreadsheets is that it is extremely easy to make huge mistakes very quickly. I think perhaps this deserves some more research before you believe this author who is famous for his sensationalistic claims.

reply to post by gardener

Some 23% Americans are on drugs for their mental illness

That's about right as I see it.

What worries me more are 2 things...

1) Why?

2) What about people who are NOT on medications and may be "ill"?

reply to post by gardener


You're absolutely right, something is way wrong here.

If 23% of the US population is getting all the drugs I call that elitist. The government needs to gathers all the meds and redistribute them to the unmedicated masses to alleviate the suffering. Totally not fair only a quarter of the population gets to zone out while the rest of us are stuck with reality.

/sarc

They're not ill, they've just been told they are and they need the nice pills to make themselves feel better than normal!
The patient is happy and so is big pharma.

DP

reply to post by gardener


Anti depressants is one of the most indiscriminately prescribed medication in America, you do not even need to get a test to get them, all you need is to tell you doctor how unhappy you feel and you will get your share, if one doesn't make you feel good they will add more.

Until you become a zombie and end taking your life and others like is becoming the trend within those that takes the medication with actually no need for it.

reply to post by gardener


I would feel confident exclaiming that 60% is misdiagnosis.( Pertaining to Mental Health)
70% in the field, " tow the line" pressure from big pharma/Big Insr.
85% accuracy for physical health diagnosis.
50% accuracy concerning your "Source".

In no way do I exact this as a reflection on you.
In fact, I am glad you created this thread.

My personal experiences, as of late, Especially when driving
concludes me to believe that 40% of my fellow people in this area
are under the influence of Meds in one form or another.
The next 40% are so self absorbed that they express no concept of
Common Decency, Manners, nor Social Grace.

100% accuracy this is "Smartphone" related.

The remaining 20% are some of coolest people you might be
lucky enough to meet.

The "Me,me,me First" aggression level has noticably increased
as of late. I find this perplexing considering the brutal winter
temps,snow, and road conditions for this area this year.
One would think that others might have "chilled out" a bit.

But alas, I have found the opposite to be true.

S&F

23% or not, all hail big pharma, we need drugs, all hail big pharma.
I do wonder, how much they're raking on "non physical injury"

The DSM is written vaguely for a reason... anyone can be found to have some type of disorder that needs to be medicated. It is a study of pharmacology rather than psycology.

Big pharma is gettin' paid...

Anti depressants are commonly used for neurological pain like fibromyalgia and small fiber neuropathy.

Cymbalta. Prozac, amitriptyline. Savella are used for fibromyalgia and there still are many doctors that believe fibromyalgia is "all in your head" somatoform disorder. "mental disorder"

In the last couple years this has been proved wrong.
www.rheumatologynews.com... 019634840d9122f7e.html
www.painresearchforum.org...

I have been diagnosed with both small fiber neuropathy and fibromyalgia and a yet unidentified large fiber nerve disorder caused by the autoimmune disorder Sarcoidosis.

How many other disorders that are now called mental illness will in the future be found to not be and found to be physical disorders.

Diabetes was at one time call a somatoform disorder. "mental disorder"

I believe true mental illness is very rare. There is some serious over/false diagnosis going on here.

IMHO,So many of these "mental illnesses are just built up anxiety manifested from negative environments, negative lifestyles, or negative thinking.

When this is the case, these pharmaceutical drugs make the situation much worse, and the underlying issues could and should have been dealt with in an all natural and healthy manner. Through healthy thinking, diet, and exercise.

I feel like the majority of meds are just terrible replacements for much needed lifestyle changes.

The "ptb" must love it! Keep us sick and dependent on "big pharma", just sick enough so we can still do our jobs before we expire.

Thanks for all the inputs! Long and short of it, Americans are the most sedated/medicated

I live near a pharmacy and see youth and older people alike being arrested day in and day out, for faking prescriptions, going postal since most narcotics on perpetual backorder because of the widespread abuse...

Not to mention that since Americans are using that much mental medication, 60% of the world supply, what are they so unhappy, why do they need sooo much of their chemical fixes, just to get thru the day!?

Addiction.

Is the American lifestyle toxic? Sure seems so, yet we are constantly mobilizing in multiple areas around the globe, installing that consumptive, medicated, psychotic lifestyle most wherever we invade... I mean, why are we in Afghanistan the past decade, really?

What's really troubling is that there are children that do need drugs there are people that do have chemical imbalances that can be corrected no other way but...let's go back to the children with this over prescribed ADHD stuff. These parents feed the kids fast food every day, sugary drinks and candy every day...they don't let the kids get any physical activity, they let them play hours of video games and watch hours of violent tv shows, they don't discipline their kids and don't follow up with the kids at school and then! and then they decide that medication is the first thing to try? Stupid, stupid parents.

reply to post by gardener


I learned that in Europe, doctors were much slower to prescribe psyche meds than they are here. But very different lifestyles, very different cultures, very different values.

I do believe that American society, is responsible. Half of it due to over-diagnoses, the other half due to the psychotic nature of current American society. American society really will make you crazy. It is a society that mentally, is driven by an overload of ambition, consumption, and self-centeredness. Our minds under constant assault by an endless variety of mixed, contradictory messages, leading us to unrealistic expectations. We end up isolated from close human relationships, develop low self-esteem, and value people only when they work themselves into a miserable, lonely grave. So of course, American society being a totally unnatural state of mind, is going to cause psychiatric issues for millions. Hell, our media alone would drive any reasonable person insane. And that's our biggest escapism.

I've often heard it said, that it is unhealthy to be sane in an insane society. So maybe that 1/4 are actually the only people with any real grip on reality.

reply to post by gardener

Countries like asia are behind in the development of mental health services, they don't have enough mental health professionals to treat all or even most of the mentally ill which is why it seems as though the US is over-medicated when looking at numbers like this.

Statistics released by China's National Center for Mental Health showed that as of the year of 2009, 100 million Chinese suffered from mental health problems with more than 160 million citizens afflicted with serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and paranoid psychosis. Such figures indicate that one in every 13 Chinese in 2009 had a mental health problem. Back in the 1950s, the reported ratio of Chinese adults suffering from mental illness was just 2.7 percent, or one in every 37 Chinese citizens.

While China has made recent efforts to expand insurance coverage , they have been insufficient; in recent years, only 45,000 people had been covered for free outpatient treatment and only 7,000 for free inpatient care. In Beijing, for example, only around ten percent of the mental patients are provided with inpatient treatment. The rest receive none, either because they cannot afford related fees or because hospitals do not have the space for them.

Source

So most of the mentally ill are thrown into hospitals, taken care of by family, or just left to fend for themselves untreated. There is a huge stigma surrounding mental illness in these countries as well which also causes people to not seek treatment. This is a failing by healthcare systems in other countries, not just American's being over-medicated.

I think this may be why we have so many "mass shootings" here. ?? Just saying!