Youth suicide attempts soared during pandemic, CDC report says

You are claiming that medication cannot help with issues (expressing skepticism).

I'm sympathetic to what you are saying that external factors are definitely at play (of course they are, in a sense. Mental illness characterised by social interaction will depend on factors of those social interactions). But you're dismissing internal factors!

For many mental illnesses, people are able to function on a day-to-day basis without treatment, but would feel better with proper treatment. And sometimes the cup overflows, and people suffer because of it. And people in the chorus of skepticism play into people not getting treatment.

> Luckily, all my friends are fellow techies who are upper-middle class, and can afford medication and therapy (and in one case, out-of-state long-term hospitalization.) But even with insurance, they're looking at many thousands of dollars of treatment.

Please understand that I am not anti-psychiatry at all. Your kid and their friends are best doing intensive therapy, and if necessary, sessions twice per week, outpatient. That is their best bet, health-wise. Because of taking Pristiq (desvenlafaxine) [SNRI] and Rexulti (brexpiprazole) for severe depression, I literally have suffered the worst thing imaginable, a drug side effect known as *akathisia*. In no exaggeration, it is worse than death. You have to move constantly, but it does not relieve the terror that you go through. You cannot physically relax at all. Your mind can only think haunting and terrorizing thoughts. It feels like you have been doused in gasoline, lit on fire, and you have been locked in a coffin. You literally survive moment-by-moment not to kill yourself. By the way, it is gruesomely painful from a perceptual standpoint. One time, when I was extremely sick, I went to the hospital and I had no idea whatsoever when I went to the emergency room that I was in sepsis along with diabetic ketoacidosis, due to being in the throes of akathisia. If you have it severely, it can cause violence and suicide. I had it severely and it lasted for about a year. I have 2 rare immune-mediated neurological disease plus type 1 diabetes (autoimmune and insulin-dependent). I have been through really terrible things in my life due to my health but akathisia by far takes the cake. It is in no exaggeration worse than death.

Watch this video, this is what it is like every single day you suffer with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_iiy8ISvdY

This is a public PSA about akathisia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgvhAilA070

This is excerpts from Jordan Peterson (whom I do not agree with from a political standpoint) who is a psychologist who suffered from it due to benzodiazepines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIfllfH0k3I

My story has a lot of parallels to this story: https://www.madinamerica.com/2021/06/boy-interrupted-a-story...

> It's past time the West reckons with our mental health crisis. Why is it that we're the wealthiest nations in the world, yet our kids are more stressed and depressed than kids in third-world countries? I think society will only become more and more unstable until we spend time seriously addressing that question and adjust our culture accordingly.

Like what? Do what Russia (along with the entire USSR) along with former Yugoslavia did to political dissidents?

Did you know that they used to put political dissidents in 4-point restraints and inject them repeatedly with Haldol, in order to induce severe akathisia as a torture method? If you did not appear "crazy" before coming in to some place like the Serbsky Institute in Moscow, you would appear absolutely "crazy" afterwards whenever you came out of there.

Have a read: https://fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/soviet-psychiatric-dr...

Also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_...

And just FYI, this effectively happened to me in America (although clearly I was not a political dissident). I got picked up by the police due to severe akathisia. I was forced to go to a medical hospital for "observation". I told the nurses that I could not have antipsychotics (which they give for agitation--although akathisia makes you extremely agitated) due to it invoking the akathisia and making it worse. About a week prior to this happening, I had just been diagnosed with akathisia. My world-renowned neurologist in movement disorders put a bunch of allergies in my medical record, including Haldol which he noted the reaction as "Akathisia". However, this particular hospital did not have access to my medical records (thank you "free market"). The nurses said that it was just an "adverse reaction" and therefore I was to receive it. They forced drugged me with antipsychotics and I had to move nonstop and I went really crazy. I was put in 4 point restraints and I was going so crazy that now I even know how to get those things off when they tie them extremely tightly.

Anyways, that was the last straw for me when it came to staying in the United States. I am a Croatian (European Union) citizen so I can live abroad in Europe. Nothing will convince me to live in the United States, even though I have been an American citizen my entire life. It is no longer my homeland. And just FYI, Russia Today did a whole propaganda documentary about people who ended up with akathisia (pretty much all of the people profiled in the documentary had it) consisting of Americans taking a bunch of pills. It is called OverPill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5722_XclQkY

> It's past time the West reckons with our mental health crisis.

OK. But doing so would admit that our entire system is broken.

It's not that more kids born today want to off themselves, it's that our system makes everyone unhappy.

We need to fix the system, not give kids pills.

Dude, I'm not dismissing anything. I just didn't want to write a book. :)

But I can see that many misunderstood my intent, so likely my fault. All I was saying is that medication is over-represented.

That was all really.

I myself have been on CBD and it helped me. I know pills can be good temporary crutches. But IMO they are given away too quickly (anecdotal evidence) without much regard to what the person is actually going through.

I'm obviously aware that what I observed is not 100% of the cases. Really not sure what made so many jump on me claiming that I over-generalized. I didn't.

I'm on your side and on the side of many who are going through a rough patch, very much because half of my life was a rough patch. I'm all too aware. I was only saying that medication is a trigger-happy tactic (again in my statistically insignificant observations).

Multiple people have pointed out errors in your thinking, but I'm gonna add something slightly different:

Consider that we know that mentioning suicide in the news increases the number of suicides. There is therefore a minor Info Hazard to mention suicides without the correct help structure in place.

You are by that original comment implying that medication is ineffective or a crutch. There are multiple other comments saying that comments similar to yours have let them believe that they should do without medication. So you are therefore doing almost the same thing yourself.

Crutches aid in healing, just as medication does for depression. And we should try to keep Info Hazards visible only in professional circles.