Survey: Americans More Accepting Of Psych Meds Than In Past
From a new paper in Psychiatric Services comes a survey from the U.S. General Social Surveys that will probably send chills down the spines of many readers and gladden the hearts of pharma execs everywhere:
“RESULTS: Public opinions regarding benefits of psychiatric medications became more favorable between 1998 and 2006. More participants in 2006 than in 1998 thought that medications help people to deal with day-to-day stresses (83.4% versus 77.8%), make things easier in relation with family and friends (75.9% versus 68.4%), and help people feel better about themselves (68.0% versus 60.1%). The public expressed a greater willingness to take medications in 2006 compared with 1998 for trouble in personal life (29.1% versus 23.3%), to cope with stresses of life (46.6% versus 35.5%), for depression (49.1% versus 41.2%), and for panic attacks (63.7% versus 55.6%). Opinions regarding the risks of medications did not change between 1998 and 2006.
“CONCLUSIONS: Americans’ opinions toward psychiatric medications became more favorable over the past decade, and people became more willing to take these medications. These changes have likely contributed to the increased use of psychiatric medications in recent years and will continue to do so in the coming years.”
Those are the words of a true drug pusher. And then this from the paper’s conclusion:
“Traditionally, negative attitudes have been among the greatest challenges in treatment of common mental health conditions in the community. Therefore, a more favorable public attitude toward mental health treatments in general, and psychiatric medications in particular, is a welcome development. However, with the increasing public acceptance of treatments, psychiatry faces the new and growing challenge of educating the public and providers to correctly identify conditions that merit the use of psychiatric medications and to distinguish these conditions from self-
limited stresses of daily life that do not require medication treatment.”
I suspect that the way psychiatry is going these days there will soon be very few “conditions” that are considered due to natural stresses of life and that don’t require medication. It disgusts me that Americans seem just fine with this trend.
Related posts:
Posted in Furious Seasons