Although I do need my asthma inhaler, but I agree, quite often a simple short term course of something is all that is required but the doctor gets paid an incentive to prescribe drugs so you get a long term thing. I always try giving things up to see if I can do without them - sometimes you can, sometimes you can't. And sometimes you get rushed to hospital after having dialled 999 because things have clashed ... not nice. Two years on I am still feeling the fallout from that little escapade.
I know so many people who have been stuck on 'happy pills' for years, because they were prescribed them when events in their life made them depressed and/or overstressed. Their perfectly normal reaction to their problem was dulled by strong drugs on which they then became dependent.
There's also the matter that any illness that doctors - or hospital consultants - can't easily diagnose is often dismissed as depression or psychosomatic. Once someone has received that label, symptoms can be treated as 'all in the mind' and ignored. Like my mother's cancer (not by her doctor, to be fair) or her friend's MND, for example.
Although I do need my asthma inhaler, but I agree, quite often a simple short term course of something is all that is required but the doctor gets paid an incentive to prescribe drugs so you get a long term thing. I always try giving things up to see if I can do without them - sometimes you can, sometimes you can't. And sometimes you get rushed to hospital after having dialled 999 because things have clashed ... not nice. Two years on I am still feeling the fallout from that little escapade.
Posted by Debster on 26 July, 2010 at 5:07 PMI know so many people who have been stuck on 'happy pills' for years, because they were prescribed them when events in their life made them depressed and/or overstressed. Their perfectly normal reaction to their problem was dulled by strong drugs on which they then became dependent.
There's also the matter that any illness that doctors - or hospital consultants - can't easily diagnose is often dismissed as depression or psychosomatic. Once someone has received that label, symptoms can be treated as 'all in the mind' and ignored. Like my mother's cancer (not by her doctor, to be fair) or her friend's MND, for example.
Posted by Z on 27 July, 2010 at 9:39 AM