There was a terrific article in yesterday’s New York Times called Medicating Women’s Feelings by Julie Holland, a NY psychiatrist. She wrote the book Moody Bitches: The Truth About the Drugs You’re Taking, The Sleep You’re Missing, The Sex You’re Not Having, and What’s Really Making You Crazy.
This is a topic we’ve already discussed here on this blog. Taking psychotropic drugs to medicate emotions is not only ineffective, it is harmful. And treatment is much slower and a longer process with psychotropic meds, which are most often prescribed unnecessarily in the first place. Add to the equation a need by society to manage women’s (and men’s!) natural, healthy emotions—and we have a big problem on our hands.
More Americans are on psychiatric medications than ever before, and in my experience they are staying on them far longer than was ever intended. Sales of antidepressants and antianxiety meds have been booming in the past two decades, and they’ve recently been outpaced by an antipsychotic, Abilify, that is the No. 1 seller among all drugs in the United States, not just psychiatric ones.
As a psychiatrist practicing for 20 years, I must tell you, this is insane.
I couldn’t have said it better.
