The last time I saw my NP she had me fill out a depression/anxiety scale. I don’t have depression or anxiety so when I finished I had a zero score. When she came in and saw the scale she re-asked some of the questions with clarifications, I still had a zero score. She looked at me flabbergasted and said “you’re the first person I’ve seen in weeks that doesn’t have significant depression or anxiety, the first one in months with a zero score.” What’s really sad is that even though she’s in family medicine most of her patients are children. I think it’s also telling that she didn’t ask me why I thought it was that I didn’t have either depression or anxiety.
On a similar note I recently had a baby and every two weeks someone called me to screen for post partum depression and every baby’s visit to the doctor I got screened. Understandable, PPD is terrible and wasn’t talked about for far too long, post partum psychosis can have tragic outcomes. So I understand the screening. But thank God I don’t have PPD. It has been quite difficult to convince nurses and doctors that I’m not lying, I’m simply not depressed.
I can’t help but wonder how many people with very low levels of depression have been talked into thinking their problem is worse than it is by doctors and nurses (who I think do have the best of intentions) and that it must be medicated. Maybe worse I wonder how many people whose depression or anxiety is normal and even healthy have been zombified through medication.
When one of the nurses was asking me further questions about PPD she asked if I had any anxiety at all? I said yeah when the doctor called me and said my baby had a hole in her heart and she didn’t know how bad it was or not so we needed to see a pediatric cardiologist I had some anxiety and distress. But I know that such things are common and generally not a big deal so while I read up on her condition so I would be prepared we also gave it to God and have an army of people praying for her so we will just wait and hope it’s no big deal. (It’s likely not, PFO and VSD that seem to be resolving.) The nurse’s response was that “well if the anxiety gets out of control make sure and call us so we can get you some medicine”. I’m sorry but if the news that your baby has a whole in her heart of unknown size or location doesn’t give you at least momentary anxiety then there’s probably something wrong with you. Short lived anxiety is a completely reasonable and normal response to that news and drugging yourself numb to that cannot be beneficial. The same is true with depression. If your pet dies that is a legitimate reason to be depressed for a time or a season, mourning is a healthy coping mechanism. Drugging someone numb so they don’t experience normal and vital emotions is the opposite of “do no harm”.
May 17, 2023·edited May 17, 2023Liked by Adrian Gaty
I have a friend undergoing treatment for head and neck cancer. They provided him with a psychologist. He's angry about what he's going through. The psych tried to push antidepressants and benzos at him and he told her to leave him alone.
A few visits later the PA assisting the chemo doc encountered his anger at the slow progress in his treatment. Once again, pills offered. And refused.
We now know there's no biochemical basis for depression. The pills are destructive garbage that numb and blunt. Wondering if/when practitioners are going to apply this knowledge to treatment.
Without interference from big pharma it would probably take 10-20 years for the realization that these “conditions” don’t have a brain chemical imbalance and that treatments must change. But with the current interference it might be 100 years maybe longer.
One huge problem is that there is no recognition of the difference between a normal response and a pathological response. If you’re angry because you are fighting cancer and it’s not going well that’s a pretty normal response. If you wake up and you have your health, a job, money in the bank, a roof over head, the sky is blue, the birds are singing and you’re so depressed you can’t leave bed then that’s more likely to be an issue that might truly need medical management. Although I suspect hormones and not just neurotransmitters play a large role, I suspect physical damage and trauma is also under diagnosed. (I wonder how many men with true depression or anxiety have low testosterone levels for example.)
I do have sympathy for doctors and nurses trying to help people though. Too many people want a pill to fix the problem. They don’t want to go to therapy or heaven forbid have to turn to religion to help with their problems. Nope, give me a pill. Exercise so I get a natural dopamine hit? Nope, give me a pill. It’s incredibly disheartening to come up with an extensive “treatment plan” for someone that includes changes in diet, exercise, and screen habits, some recommendation to address spiritual needs without going far enough or being specific enough to get yourself fired or sued, not to mention therapeutic exercises only to have them stare at you glassy eyed and say “can’t I just have some Prozac?” Or even better for them just to smile and nod and then leave nasty reviews all over the internet because you “refused to help them”. Until the average American patient is more interested in avoiding big pharma than financing it not only do doctors have no incentive to change, they are actively incentivized against it on multiple levels.
You're right. Patients need to educate themselves and so many won't bother. So many seem to welcome the numbness that psych meds inflict. I can see how tough it would be to face a patient who is unwilling to take measures to address his real problems and thinks a pill will do the trick, and then abuses the doctor who won't go along with his self-destructive plans.
It's vicious circle now: drug company control of research and testing, control of their data, control of what gets into "prestigious" medical journals, pressure on MDs, coupled with direct to consumer marketing of their swill. Doctors get squeezed from both sides. Really up to the patients not to be such trusting complacent sheep.
I think it’s somewhat more complicated than being complacent sheep although there’s certainly a component of that. I think much of it is a time/energy/effort factor. American culture has a tendency toward pushing toward doing more, accomplishing more, having more all the time.
I saw some ads a few years ago that have stuck with me ever since. A company had produced a new rotary milking parlor that significantly reduced the amount of time needed to milk cows. If you went to the European website all the ads discussed how the time savings greatly improved the quality of life of the farmers. They were able to get done in time to go watch the grandkids at school events, meet friends for dinner. They talked about how the time saved helped encourage younger people and families to go into dairy farming the lack of which has been a real problem. The ads on the American website were all about how with the significant time savings you could buy more cows because you could milk more cows in the same amount of time with the same number of workers. The attitude wasn’t one of greed though it was one of efficiency, I have more time thus I do more work.
It takes a few seconds to take a pill, but exercising, eating a healthy diet, working through issues, all take time and energy which is something that most Americans don’t have much of, or at least don’t think they do.
It's lack of self discipline, passivity and contentment with the easy way out, which seems to be taking a shot or a pill. Conditioned by the direct to consumer commercials, these are the people who don't want to question or educate themselves. I am loath to defend it as some type of Yankee efficiency. It's something my parents and grandparents could not understand. Like the stampede for semaglutide...a shot or pill for the rest of your life beats out changing your diet and exercising. Maybe the hours spend immobile with a phone or in front of a screen could be used for a walk around the neighborhood. We have the time. We don't have the will.
That’s certainly true for some. But the people I know who turn to these pills generally don’t spend hours in front of a screen unless it’s for work. Generally speaking they work full time, go to church and are active in church and the community, have kids that are active outside of school which means hauling kids around to practices, games, recitals, competitions, camps, and more. I’m not saying there’s no possible way for them to make time for healthier living, but that’s the thing, they would have to prioritize and make time. That might mean having to give up other past times or it might mean having to decrease the amount of extracurriculars your kid is involved in so you don’t have to spend as much time going from place to place. Healthy living for most people is low on the priority list which is usually something along the lines of work, family, church, hobby, then maybe health. Americans spend more time at work than most of our European counterparts (longer days, fewer holidays, fewer vacation days). That directly impacts the amount of time available for other things, like preparing healthy foods and getting a decent amount of exercise.
There are definitely people who just sit in front of the couch all day and play video games and want the easy way out. (I’m guessing those people are also mostly single and childless.) But a good many of the people who are also looking for the magic pill are extremely busy with careers and families. Maybe this is in part a coping mechanism, stay busy so you don’t think about how depressed you are. The solution is to move healthy living up the priority list. But sometimes that’s easier said than done. It isn’t easy to tell your kid that you are limiting them to one after school sport or event a season because you don’t want to spend all your time hauling them to various practices and events and need time to work out. It isn’t easy to tell your church that you can’t help with that event because you need to meal prep that day. At least in my experience most people are very busy, they are just busy with the wrong things.
Thank you for mentioning diet. It might be the bubble I'm in, but there's increasing awareness that what you eat affects how you feel. It's not a silver bullet by any means, but then, most things are multi-factorial.
Love this: "It is one thing, like Rush’s critics, to be mocked by your contemporaries; it is quite another, like Rush himself, to be mocked by generation after generation after generation to come."
You would think modern day physicians would study their history and have a healthy dose of fear of being wrong. But it seems to be the opposite. We think our scientific methods are immune from fallibility. And we seem to have forgotten a slip in logic now, as it has in the past, will be forever remembered and lauded as what not to do.
Too many people do read the scientific history, but think these kinds of failed theories are the pre-science superstitions from which our superior scienciness saves us, taking exactly the wrong lesson from them (and the most unscientific attitude, I might add).
Interesting article and thoughts. I have struggled with anxiety and depression for the last year, and I did end up taking a low dose of Wellbutrin. While it got me out of the dark place I was in, I have felt it start waning in effectiveness. We talked about adding in another medication, and I ultimately decided I didn’t feel good about it. I started acupuncture instead, along with meditation/prayer and trying to follow the principals in the book “the power of positive thinking” (which is very biblical and prayed based) and so far, I’ve seen far good results. I am hoping to wean off the Wellbutrin soon.
I have three young boys and my greatest desire is to get them through childhood with a positive and happy outlook. When I see the numbers for children struggling with mental health it’s sobering. I mentioned to my mom yesterday that it’s no coincidence that Gen Z has such high rates of religious disaffiliation and mental health conditions. Yet so many of them like to blame mental health on religion and religious beliefs. It’s so sad. This generation needs God more than ever.
Yes we all do! God bless you and your boys! I wish I had an easy answer but with my own we're just trying to raise them with as much of an old-fashioned, real (ie not virtual), wonder-filled childhood as possible, and a strong faith community. don't know if it will be enough, but it's worth the fight.
You might find interesting the book "The Moral Basis of a Backward Society" by Banfield. The author lived in and studied a small, poor Italian village in southern Italy. He concluded their ethic was: maximize the short term gain to you and your immediate family, and assume everyone else will do likewise. This mindset killed community involvement and altruism and he contends left its adherents miserable, sick and poor. He wrote the book in the mid 60s when volunteering and patriotism were still quite common in the US. He contrasts the US and even northern Italy with this sad region in the south of Italy.
I hope we can recover from whatever has caused our descent to our present state.
sounds very cool, thank you! sounds kinda like that famous Bowling Alone book. It's like the old saying about being born on third base and thinking you've hit a triple... we don't realize how important to all of us community involvement was, until all the community was destroyed and we all ended up miserable!
i was given Zoloft for Post-P depression, another friend with the same was told to exercise daily and do more self care. But it took 3+ tries to get off-because of withdrawal side effects. (15 years!) .
congrats on getting off! if exercise and eating right and going outside were a product pharma could make money off of, you'd see a lot more prescriptions for it, it really does do wonders...
May 17, 2023·edited May 17, 2023Liked by Adrian Gaty
My older sister takes anti-psychotic medication to stay in reality, so I am not wholesale anti-mind-altering drugs.
But I wouldn’t give you two shakes for anti-depressants. Interestingly, the mental health memoir, Lost Connections, comes to a “secular version” of the need for real community for mental health (and isn’t that what the social media experiment has taught us all??)
The author also concluded that these drug are VERY short-term in whatever benefits they offer & and they also make you fat.
Yes, I'm definitely not wholesale against them, particularly for psychosis, though I admit that is far outside my ballpark. I like Johann Hari, he has a recent book about ADHD that is also very insightful. Ultimately I don't think the 'secular community' will prove a lasting answer, but it's certainly better than the drugged out alternative!
I think that there may be an uncomfortable association between these drugs (as well as trying to withdraw from these drugs) and violent behavior. I wonder about this every time with incidents like the Nashville shootings. See also cannabis use.
I got sucked in to the pharma complex as soon as I went to college. I’ve constantly been told there’s something terribly wrong with me. Through the grace of God, I’ve landed with a psychiatrist who prescribed me a course on CS Lewis, and I was received into the Catholic Church this Easter. At my last appointment, he mentioned a lot of patients recently are in general complaining their medication they’ve been on for years isn’t working. He’s telling them to go to church or wherever they go for spiritual fulfillment.
I wish someone could’ve helped me in a real way over 20 years ago. I’m convinced I may have actual problems now because of all the various medications that mostly made it all worse, destroyed relationships, and then I was always told it was my fault Prozac was making me more depressed.
It took us awhile to get to that point, but, it’s been great. I see a chiropractor who is Greek Orthodox. It’s nice when you are considered as a person instead of just a bunch of data.
Before there was this phenomenal push for antidepressants, people were being conditioned by television and movies (and the companies paying for advertising on them) to consume, consume, consume. Well, people did and then discovered that their appetites could never be satisfied, no matter how much food they could manage to stuff their faces with or how much junk they could fill their homes with. Naturally, depression sets in because of the God-shaped void that can’t be satisfied with earthly things. To my way of thinking, depression (how appropriate the very word is!) must be tackled by reversing the trends that created the “hole” in the first place and following biblical advice: ditch the worldly things that clutter up your life and seek what God desires first. It sounds easy, but of course it’s not. There will be tremendous pushback from family and friends, and outsiders will ridicule you. It’s a lonely place to be, but we know who has our back and makes our path level.
Jul 8, 2023·edited Jul 8, 2023Liked by Adrian Gaty
I agree that consumerism is at the base of a lot of our problems, making people believe that this-or-that product will make them happy.
Lay this at the feet of marketing, which is just propaganda. It got legs way back with a nephew of Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays, who more or less invented PR/marketing/advertising. https://allthatsinteresting.com/edward-bernays
Today I make it a point to deliberately avoid looking at ads. I run ad blockers on my web browsers and don't have a TV. It's very liberating. I just wish it hadn't taken me 60 years to figure this out.
I really appreciate this: 'Be charitable with skeptics, too. The critic who correctly attacked Rushites for killing thousands was found guilty of libel and fined the largest judgment in Pennsylvania history. Now that we know he was right all along...'
What's missing today is humility. Firm belief in one's ideology leads to hubris. So few people have the habit of thinking "What if I'm wrong...?"
When my decades-long relationship broke up a few years ago, my doctor, whom I had always considered on the more reasonable and enlightened end of the spectrum, insisted on giving me a prescription for an antidepressant, despite my objection. Of course I never filled it. Afterward, talking to friends, I was shocked to learn that something like a third of the population is on some sort of medication like that. So much for resilience.
This is such a tough topic. I'm a psychiatric nurse practitioner (and Christian) and feel like I have an existential crisis about prescribing of psychiatric medication every couple months. While part of me leans your direction and thinks all psych meds shouldn't be prescribed, I occasionally come across cases of extreme debilitation, even those doing all the recommended non-pharma interventions, even strong Christians who came to me as a last resort. These cases make the choice more difficult. The meds in these cases almost never let the person coast through life with a pseudo-rest, more they seem to enable to person to get out of bed or engage with their children. Even as I write this, I feel like arguing with myself. Anyways, I'm happy I found another Christian provider wrestling with these topics.
If every prescriber wrestled with it like you we’d be in great shape! I just wish there were a way to leave it as an option for those extreme cases while stopping other thoughtless providers from giving it away like candy. But there’s always gonna be those awful docs ruining it for all of us!
The last time I saw my NP she had me fill out a depression/anxiety scale. I don’t have depression or anxiety so when I finished I had a zero score. When she came in and saw the scale she re-asked some of the questions with clarifications, I still had a zero score. She looked at me flabbergasted and said “you’re the first person I’ve seen in weeks that doesn’t have significant depression or anxiety, the first one in months with a zero score.” What’s really sad is that even though she’s in family medicine most of her patients are children. I think it’s also telling that she didn’t ask me why I thought it was that I didn’t have either depression or anxiety.
On a similar note I recently had a baby and every two weeks someone called me to screen for post partum depression and every baby’s visit to the doctor I got screened. Understandable, PPD is terrible and wasn’t talked about for far too long, post partum psychosis can have tragic outcomes. So I understand the screening. But thank God I don’t have PPD. It has been quite difficult to convince nurses and doctors that I’m not lying, I’m simply not depressed.
I can’t help but wonder how many people with very low levels of depression have been talked into thinking their problem is worse than it is by doctors and nurses (who I think do have the best of intentions) and that it must be medicated. Maybe worse I wonder how many people whose depression or anxiety is normal and even healthy have been zombified through medication.
When one of the nurses was asking me further questions about PPD she asked if I had any anxiety at all? I said yeah when the doctor called me and said my baby had a hole in her heart and she didn’t know how bad it was or not so we needed to see a pediatric cardiologist I had some anxiety and distress. But I know that such things are common and generally not a big deal so while I read up on her condition so I would be prepared we also gave it to God and have an army of people praying for her so we will just wait and hope it’s no big deal. (It’s likely not, PFO and VSD that seem to be resolving.) The nurse’s response was that “well if the anxiety gets out of control make sure and call us so we can get you some medicine”. I’m sorry but if the news that your baby has a whole in her heart of unknown size or location doesn’t give you at least momentary anxiety then there’s probably something wrong with you. Short lived anxiety is a completely reasonable and normal response to that news and drugging yourself numb to that cannot be beneficial. The same is true with depression. If your pet dies that is a legitimate reason to be depressed for a time or a season, mourning is a healthy coping mechanism. Drugging someone numb so they don’t experience normal and vital emotions is the opposite of “do no harm”.
what a fantastic comment, thank you! and, most of all, congratulations on the baby!!
I have a friend undergoing treatment for head and neck cancer. They provided him with a psychologist. He's angry about what he's going through. The psych tried to push antidepressants and benzos at him and he told her to leave him alone.
A few visits later the PA assisting the chemo doc encountered his anger at the slow progress in his treatment. Once again, pills offered. And refused.
We now know there's no biochemical basis for depression. The pills are destructive garbage that numb and blunt. Wondering if/when practitioners are going to apply this knowledge to treatment.
Without interference from big pharma it would probably take 10-20 years for the realization that these “conditions” don’t have a brain chemical imbalance and that treatments must change. But with the current interference it might be 100 years maybe longer.
One huge problem is that there is no recognition of the difference between a normal response and a pathological response. If you’re angry because you are fighting cancer and it’s not going well that’s a pretty normal response. If you wake up and you have your health, a job, money in the bank, a roof over head, the sky is blue, the birds are singing and you’re so depressed you can’t leave bed then that’s more likely to be an issue that might truly need medical management. Although I suspect hormones and not just neurotransmitters play a large role, I suspect physical damage and trauma is also under diagnosed. (I wonder how many men with true depression or anxiety have low testosterone levels for example.)
I do have sympathy for doctors and nurses trying to help people though. Too many people want a pill to fix the problem. They don’t want to go to therapy or heaven forbid have to turn to religion to help with their problems. Nope, give me a pill. Exercise so I get a natural dopamine hit? Nope, give me a pill. It’s incredibly disheartening to come up with an extensive “treatment plan” for someone that includes changes in diet, exercise, and screen habits, some recommendation to address spiritual needs without going far enough or being specific enough to get yourself fired or sued, not to mention therapeutic exercises only to have them stare at you glassy eyed and say “can’t I just have some Prozac?” Or even better for them just to smile and nod and then leave nasty reviews all over the internet because you “refused to help them”. Until the average American patient is more interested in avoiding big pharma than financing it not only do doctors have no incentive to change, they are actively incentivized against it on multiple levels.
You're right. Patients need to educate themselves and so many won't bother. So many seem to welcome the numbness that psych meds inflict. I can see how tough it would be to face a patient who is unwilling to take measures to address his real problems and thinks a pill will do the trick, and then abuses the doctor who won't go along with his self-destructive plans.
It's vicious circle now: drug company control of research and testing, control of their data, control of what gets into "prestigious" medical journals, pressure on MDs, coupled with direct to consumer marketing of their swill. Doctors get squeezed from both sides. Really up to the patients not to be such trusting complacent sheep.
I think it’s somewhat more complicated than being complacent sheep although there’s certainly a component of that. I think much of it is a time/energy/effort factor. American culture has a tendency toward pushing toward doing more, accomplishing more, having more all the time.
I saw some ads a few years ago that have stuck with me ever since. A company had produced a new rotary milking parlor that significantly reduced the amount of time needed to milk cows. If you went to the European website all the ads discussed how the time savings greatly improved the quality of life of the farmers. They were able to get done in time to go watch the grandkids at school events, meet friends for dinner. They talked about how the time saved helped encourage younger people and families to go into dairy farming the lack of which has been a real problem. The ads on the American website were all about how with the significant time savings you could buy more cows because you could milk more cows in the same amount of time with the same number of workers. The attitude wasn’t one of greed though it was one of efficiency, I have more time thus I do more work.
It takes a few seconds to take a pill, but exercising, eating a healthy diet, working through issues, all take time and energy which is something that most Americans don’t have much of, or at least don’t think they do.
It's lack of self discipline, passivity and contentment with the easy way out, which seems to be taking a shot or a pill. Conditioned by the direct to consumer commercials, these are the people who don't want to question or educate themselves. I am loath to defend it as some type of Yankee efficiency. It's something my parents and grandparents could not understand. Like the stampede for semaglutide...a shot or pill for the rest of your life beats out changing your diet and exercising. Maybe the hours spend immobile with a phone or in front of a screen could be used for a walk around the neighborhood. We have the time. We don't have the will.
That’s certainly true for some. But the people I know who turn to these pills generally don’t spend hours in front of a screen unless it’s for work. Generally speaking they work full time, go to church and are active in church and the community, have kids that are active outside of school which means hauling kids around to practices, games, recitals, competitions, camps, and more. I’m not saying there’s no possible way for them to make time for healthier living, but that’s the thing, they would have to prioritize and make time. That might mean having to give up other past times or it might mean having to decrease the amount of extracurriculars your kid is involved in so you don’t have to spend as much time going from place to place. Healthy living for most people is low on the priority list which is usually something along the lines of work, family, church, hobby, then maybe health. Americans spend more time at work than most of our European counterparts (longer days, fewer holidays, fewer vacation days). That directly impacts the amount of time available for other things, like preparing healthy foods and getting a decent amount of exercise.
There are definitely people who just sit in front of the couch all day and play video games and want the easy way out. (I’m guessing those people are also mostly single and childless.) But a good many of the people who are also looking for the magic pill are extremely busy with careers and families. Maybe this is in part a coping mechanism, stay busy so you don’t think about how depressed you are. The solution is to move healthy living up the priority list. But sometimes that’s easier said than done. It isn’t easy to tell your kid that you are limiting them to one after school sport or event a season because you don’t want to spend all your time hauling them to various practices and events and need time to work out. It isn’t easy to tell your church that you can’t help with that event because you need to meal prep that day. At least in my experience most people are very busy, they are just busy with the wrong things.
Thank you for mentioning diet. It might be the bubble I'm in, but there's increasing awareness that what you eat affects how you feel. It's not a silver bullet by any means, but then, most things are multi-factorial.
Poking Big Pharma with the stick of Scripture, History, Augustine, Esolen, and Chesterton. It’s a good morning!
thank you! i had a part in there initially about CS Lewis and Till We Have Faces but thought better of it, gotta pace myself : )
Love this: "It is one thing, like Rush’s critics, to be mocked by your contemporaries; it is quite another, like Rush himself, to be mocked by generation after generation after generation to come."
You would think modern day physicians would study their history and have a healthy dose of fear of being wrong. But it seems to be the opposite. We think our scientific methods are immune from fallibility. And we seem to have forgotten a slip in logic now, as it has in the past, will be forever remembered and lauded as what not to do.
Enjoyed reading this. Good day sir.
Thank you! One thing physicians definitely don't do is study their history. I appreciate your comment very much.
Too many people do read the scientific history, but think these kinds of failed theories are the pre-science superstitions from which our superior scienciness saves us, taking exactly the wrong lesson from them (and the most unscientific attitude, I might add).
Hubris is rampant.
Interesting article and thoughts. I have struggled with anxiety and depression for the last year, and I did end up taking a low dose of Wellbutrin. While it got me out of the dark place I was in, I have felt it start waning in effectiveness. We talked about adding in another medication, and I ultimately decided I didn’t feel good about it. I started acupuncture instead, along with meditation/prayer and trying to follow the principals in the book “the power of positive thinking” (which is very biblical and prayed based) and so far, I’ve seen far good results. I am hoping to wean off the Wellbutrin soon.
I have three young boys and my greatest desire is to get them through childhood with a positive and happy outlook. When I see the numbers for children struggling with mental health it’s sobering. I mentioned to my mom yesterday that it’s no coincidence that Gen Z has such high rates of religious disaffiliation and mental health conditions. Yet so many of them like to blame mental health on religion and religious beliefs. It’s so sad. This generation needs God more than ever.
Yes we all do! God bless you and your boys! I wish I had an easy answer but with my own we're just trying to raise them with as much of an old-fashioned, real (ie not virtual), wonder-filled childhood as possible, and a strong faith community. don't know if it will be enough, but it's worth the fight.
You might find interesting the book "The Moral Basis of a Backward Society" by Banfield. The author lived in and studied a small, poor Italian village in southern Italy. He concluded their ethic was: maximize the short term gain to you and your immediate family, and assume everyone else will do likewise. This mindset killed community involvement and altruism and he contends left its adherents miserable, sick and poor. He wrote the book in the mid 60s when volunteering and patriotism were still quite common in the US. He contrasts the US and even northern Italy with this sad region in the south of Italy.
I hope we can recover from whatever has caused our descent to our present state.
sounds very cool, thank you! sounds kinda like that famous Bowling Alone book. It's like the old saying about being born on third base and thinking you've hit a triple... we don't realize how important to all of us community involvement was, until all the community was destroyed and we all ended up miserable!
i was given Zoloft for Post-P depression, another friend with the same was told to exercise daily and do more self care. But it took 3+ tries to get off-because of withdrawal side effects. (15 years!) .
congrats on getting off! if exercise and eating right and going outside were a product pharma could make money off of, you'd see a lot more prescriptions for it, it really does do wonders...
My older sister takes anti-psychotic medication to stay in reality, so I am not wholesale anti-mind-altering drugs.
But I wouldn’t give you two shakes for anti-depressants. Interestingly, the mental health memoir, Lost Connections, comes to a “secular version” of the need for real community for mental health (and isn’t that what the social media experiment has taught us all??)
The author also concluded that these drug are VERY short-term in whatever benefits they offer & and they also make you fat.
Yes, I'm definitely not wholesale against them, particularly for psychosis, though I admit that is far outside my ballpark. I like Johann Hari, he has a recent book about ADHD that is also very insightful. Ultimately I don't think the 'secular community' will prove a lasting answer, but it's certainly better than the drugged out alternative!
I think that there may be an uncomfortable association between these drugs (as well as trying to withdraw from these drugs) and violent behavior. I wonder about this every time with incidents like the Nashville shootings. See also cannabis use.
Yep! See here for instance on a related line:
https://www.city-journal.org/article/antidepressants-empathy-and-democracy
I got sucked in to the pharma complex as soon as I went to college. I’ve constantly been told there’s something terribly wrong with me. Through the grace of God, I’ve landed with a psychiatrist who prescribed me a course on CS Lewis, and I was received into the Catholic Church this Easter. At my last appointment, he mentioned a lot of patients recently are in general complaining their medication they’ve been on for years isn’t working. He’s telling them to go to church or wherever they go for spiritual fulfillment.
I wish someone could’ve helped me in a real way over 20 years ago. I’m convinced I may have actual problems now because of all the various medications that mostly made it all worse, destroyed relationships, and then I was always told it was my fault Prozac was making me more depressed.
Wow! How did you find a psychiatrist like that? What a blessing! And a belated happy, happy Easter!
Pure grace of God. He’s amazing.
I would love to shadow a provider like that. I'm sure he walks that line carefully.
It took us awhile to get to that point, but, it’s been great. I see a chiropractor who is Greek Orthodox. It’s nice when you are considered as a person instead of just a bunch of data.
Before there was this phenomenal push for antidepressants, people were being conditioned by television and movies (and the companies paying for advertising on them) to consume, consume, consume. Well, people did and then discovered that their appetites could never be satisfied, no matter how much food they could manage to stuff their faces with or how much junk they could fill their homes with. Naturally, depression sets in because of the God-shaped void that can’t be satisfied with earthly things. To my way of thinking, depression (how appropriate the very word is!) must be tackled by reversing the trends that created the “hole” in the first place and following biblical advice: ditch the worldly things that clutter up your life and seek what God desires first. It sounds easy, but of course it’s not. There will be tremendous pushback from family and friends, and outsiders will ridicule you. It’s a lonely place to be, but we know who has our back and makes our path level.
I agree that consumerism is at the base of a lot of our problems, making people believe that this-or-that product will make them happy.
Lay this at the feet of marketing, which is just propaganda. It got legs way back with a nephew of Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays, who more or less invented PR/marketing/advertising. https://allthatsinteresting.com/edward-bernays
Today I make it a point to deliberately avoid looking at ads. I run ad blockers on my web browsers and don't have a TV. It's very liberating. I just wish it hadn't taken me 60 years to figure this out.
Yes, the Bernays story is very relevant to life today!
I really appreciate this: 'Be charitable with skeptics, too. The critic who correctly attacked Rushites for killing thousands was found guilty of libel and fined the largest judgment in Pennsylvania history. Now that we know he was right all along...'
What's missing today is humility. Firm belief in one's ideology leads to hubris. So few people have the habit of thinking "What if I'm wrong...?"
When my decades-long relationship broke up a few years ago, my doctor, whom I had always considered on the more reasonable and enlightened end of the spectrum, insisted on giving me a prescription for an antidepressant, despite my objection. Of course I never filled it. Afterward, talking to friends, I was shocked to learn that something like a third of the population is on some sort of medication like that. So much for resilience.
This is such a tough topic. I'm a psychiatric nurse practitioner (and Christian) and feel like I have an existential crisis about prescribing of psychiatric medication every couple months. While part of me leans your direction and thinks all psych meds shouldn't be prescribed, I occasionally come across cases of extreme debilitation, even those doing all the recommended non-pharma interventions, even strong Christians who came to me as a last resort. These cases make the choice more difficult. The meds in these cases almost never let the person coast through life with a pseudo-rest, more they seem to enable to person to get out of bed or engage with their children. Even as I write this, I feel like arguing with myself. Anyways, I'm happy I found another Christian provider wrestling with these topics.
Thanks.
If every prescriber wrestled with it like you we’d be in great shape! I just wish there were a way to leave it as an option for those extreme cases while stopping other thoughtless providers from giving it away like candy. But there’s always gonna be those awful docs ruining it for all of us!