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Comment by lazide | Hacker News Reader

Considering how the exact same thing happens without meds, but people will just kill themselves more sometimes…..

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17728420/

Except kids.

Barbiturates were a problem for how many decades? How much over prescription were there of "mothers little helpers"? How about oxy? How many people did that kill? How about benzodiazepines? DO we even have accurate data on that, or did we just stop looking at the long term effects.

We're not studying the impact of over prescription of psychopharmacology. There is NO data on what happens if you give these drugs to people who DONT need them. Zero, None. And we would be very naive to think that we dont have that problem.

Edit: The only reduction in suicide rate of those taking SSRI's vs those getting a placebo is in the over 65 age group.

I was on an SSRI for two years, off it now. That stuff is evil.

But why? I resisted for years and started taking them a few months ago, and they really seem to be helping. I'm not so much ignoring the structural issues as I'm not so sore from them that I can't deal with them frankly.

The problem is that after these drugs "take the edge off" there's work to be done. I like the allegory I have hear w/r/t psychedelics:

Psychedelics allow you to pitch a tent in your backyard to renovate your home. But eventually, you make your home as you want it and stop needing renovations.

This is the right attitude for all medicine.

the challenge from a psychiatry perspective is that psychiatrists almost literally just do drugs (as do many MDs). therapy is almost always done by LCSW’s sometimes Psychologists, rarely by Psychiatrists. Same with PT and physical therapists vs MDs.

And as any PT/MD will tell you, even getting people to take a full course of antibiotics or their drugs properly is difficult. 1 in 3 odds? 1 in 2?

Getting someone to finish a full course of PT? Nearly impossible. Like 1 in 20 type odds.

So, the system throws medicines and surguries/treatments at the patients when possible (because they can control those things, and they work!) whenever they can, and do tell people about the other options - and they do work and are necessary for issues to really work out well a lot of time - but almost no one really does it.

Then they blame the medicine or surgury for not fully solving the problem, or when it comes back in a different form/direction.

Like weight loss.

But what else are we going to do?

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