Does long term use of psychiatric drugs cause more harm than good?
1–10 of 27 posts
Re: Does long term use of psychiatric drugs cause more harm than good?
#2hmm Well considering heroine use has doubled in the passed 5 years, and doubled from 2012-2013, and that three-quarters of all heroine users now started out by getting addicted to their prescribed pharmaceutical equivalent, due to the delay in the administration cracking down on the pharmaceutical pill farms who incentivized the healthcare system to hand these out like candy with anyone who used the word "pain, back pain or anxiety", I would say, yes, psychiatric drugs and painkillers, are causing more harm than good. We are in the middle of the biggest heroine epidemic in U.S. History.
The Huffington Post has three articles in 2015 detailing this epidemic and providing the statistics on this for anyone interested. This one is the most in depth and compelling I have seen so far: http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/dying-to-be-free-heroin-t...
The best part is there is a compelling treatment, but it is stigmatized in favor of abstinence/cold turkey teaching. Of course there is no data to support this is more effective (in fact a disturbing amount of data to show otherwise) but alot of politics of holier than thou to support the failing system. Read more about this tragedy here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-...
Re: Does long term use of psychiatric drugs cause more harm than good?
#3hmm Well considering heroine use has doubled in the passed 5 years, and doubled from 2012-2013, and that three-quarters of all heroine users now started out by getting addicted to their prescribed pharmaceutical equivalent, due to the delay in the administration cracking down on the pharmaceutical pill farms who incentivized the healthcare system to hand these out like candy with anyone who used the word "pain, back…
Heroin (and prescribed opioids) are not psychiatric drugs, so while yes they are a big problem, they're not really relevant to whether psychiatric drugs are positive or negative.
Re: Does long term use of psychiatric drugs cause more harm than good?
#4hmm Well considering heroine use has doubled in the passed 5 years, and doubled from 2012-2013, and that three-quarters of all heroine users now started out by getting addicted to their prescribed pharmaceutical equivalent, due to the delay in the administration cracking down on the pharmaceutical pill farms who incentivized the healthcare system to hand these out like candy with anyone who used the word "pain, back…
I'm deeply confused by this comment. The main thesis of that first link you posted is that it's way too hard for psychiatrists to prescribe a drug that treats heroin addiction.
Re: Does long term use of psychiatric drugs cause more harm than good?
#5The truth is that we need lots of well designed clinical trials to decide if psychedelics are helpful or not. It's really difficult to decide on efficacy of drugs. For example, we still aren't certain how much salt is bad for you, who knows if LSD and other drugs that react in mindblowingly complex ways in the brain can be good or bad.
We can only get somewhere with this by being as scientific as we can and refining our view of these drugs, be they prove to be good or bad. Prohibition of them definitely hasn't helped us decide. I'm willing to believe that they do help some people, some of the time.
Re: Does long term use of psychiatric drugs cause more harm than good?
#6The truth is that we need lots of well designed clinical trials to decide if psychedelics are helpful or not. It's really difficult to decide on efficacy of drugs. For example, we still aren't certain how much salt is bad for you, who knows if LSD and other drugs that react in mindblowingly complex ways in the brain can be good or bad. We can only get somewhere with this by being as scientific as we can and refining…
the article is about psychiatric drugs, not psychedelics.
Re: Does long term use of psychiatric drugs cause more harm than good?
#7[deleted]
Re: Does long term use of psychiatric drugs cause more harm than good?
#8hmm Well considering heroine use has doubled in the passed 5 years, and doubled from 2012-2013, and that three-quarters of all heroine users now started out by getting addicted to their prescribed pharmaceutical equivalent, due to the delay in the administration cracking down on the pharmaceutical pill farms who incentivized the healthcare system to hand these out like candy with anyone who used the word "pain, back…
Opioids and Benzos need to be much more carefully prescribed. They are addictive and expensive and people build a tolerance to them. Once you have are addicted and have a tolerance the logical decision to make is somethimes to start snorting heroin as it is much cheaper. I hear a lot of people starting on prescribed opioids then moving to heroin because it is more affordable.
That being said, these classes of drugs are not the ones being discussed in the article.
Re: Does long term use of psychiatric drugs cause more harm than good?
#9This article is unhelpful, typical of the BMJ.
There are so many different classes and types of psychiatric drugs that even attempting to make sweeping comments like this (one way or the other) are ludicrous.
Re: Does long term use of psychiatric drugs cause more harm than good?
#10hmm Well considering heroine use has doubled in the passed 5 years, and doubled from 2012-2013, and that three-quarters of all heroine users now started out by getting addicted to their prescribed pharmaceutical equivalent, due to the delay in the administration cracking down on the pharmaceutical pill farms who incentivized the healthcare system to hand these out like candy with anyone who used the word "pain, back…
> incentivized the healthcare system to hand these out like candy with anyone who used the word "pain, back pain or anxiety"
It's all well and good to blame big pharma, but the problem isn't an incentivised healthcare scheme, the problem is there's a lack of awareness and follow up care associated with the people who are prescribed these drugs. In Ireland I was put through weeks of agony trying out various strengths of painkillers before they decided to give me Oxycodene, which had me back on my feet and in work. There's still people becoming addicted to these drugs who aren't given these drugs just because they are asked to.
The biggest problem I saw was that my GP decided that when my back pain was resolved after an operation he decided I was finished with the painkillers as of right now. No weaning off process, no care to ensure that I was coping without the tablets other than the pain.
furthermore, when I was put on them, my doctor mentioned in passing that they were addictive - Nobody mentioned to me that I could end up with a chronic addiction to them when they put me on them. As is always the case; education and information availability will solve a huge amount of the problems, along with better management when withdrawing from opioids (that doesn't require me to sign up to a rehab program)