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Biotech / Medical : Biotech News
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From: Doc Bones3/6/2008 2:13:30 AM
   of 7143
 
The Medicated Americans: Antidepressant Prescriptions on the Rise

Close to 10 percent of men and women in America are now taking drugs to combat depression. How did a once rare condition become so common?

Scientific American Mind - February, 2008

By Charles Barber

In the past three generations, increasing numbers of Americans have been prescribed antidepressants. In many cases, such prescriptions are the only mental health care the patients receive.

One cause of the rise in antidepressant use is that many doctors conflate conventional sadness—as from the loss of a loved one or a life-changing event such as a divorce—with the more serious and life-quashing condition of clinical depression.

A second contributing factor, the author argues, is a change in the standard diagnostic guide, which caused many milder mental ailments to fall under the seemingly neutral label of “disorder.”


I am thinking of the Medicated Americans, those 11 percent of women and 5 percent of men who are taking antidepressants.

[continued at ]

sciam.com
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