New statistics show that at least one in every 10 Canadians is considered to be depressed, and that over 14.5 million prescriptions for anti-depressants are filled every year. That’s a 350 per cent increase over the last 20 years, with only a one percent rise in population. Honestly, is the problem that there are that many people in this country with a biochemical problem with their bodies, or is it that people simply want easy solutions to life’s difficulties?
There are a few people, it’s true, that have a genuine problem with the way their brains uptake serotonin (a hormone that, among other things, is related to feelings of happiness). But is it really possible that a full 10 per cent of us have such a disorder-that Mother Nature designed the human body so badly that we’re all fucking sad all the time?
A study was done several years ago where the effects of Prozac were tested against a placebo and against St. John’s Wort, a natural supplement that some people take for depression. The study was done in the hopes that St. John’s Wort would be proven ineffective, vindicating modern medical science. The results however showed that not only was Prozac less effective than St. John’s Wort, they were both less effective than the placebo! When those people who had taken the placebo and had become happier were told that they’d been simply taking sugar pills, many were outraged, and demanded to given real drugs. A fewwiser individuals decided that their depression was something they could conquer on their own.
Chemicals in our bodies, like hormones, have a huge influence on theway we think and feel, but the way we think and feel also effects the chemicals in our bodies. Countless studies have shown this, starting with a study on primates back in the 1960s that showed that males suffering from abuse at the hands of the alpha male had lower levels of many mood regulating hormones. Biochemistry is a two-way street, and mind can overcome conquer matter. If your body is low on happy hormones, it isn’t necessarily because you have something permanently wrong with you-it could be something that has temporarily changed due to external circumstances.
Before you start sending in angry responses, I have suffered from depression myself, so I do know how crippling nihilistic, empty feelings of hopelessness can be. But Western medicine is a business, don’t be naive and think it isn’t. Drugs are pushed on people like tobacco on high school students. Anti-depressants and a slew of other drugs are often prescribed carelessly. I have a friend who was given aprescription for Prozac when she was depressed after her mother died.
She wasn’t depressed because she had a problem with her brain-she was depressed because her mother died before she was even 20 years old.
There is a tendency to assume that going to Med School makes you infallible. Frankly, just because you have letters after your name doesn’t mean you know what you’re doing. My cousin was suffering from extreme depression 10 years ago, and was prescribed an anti-depressant. The pills threw his body’s biochemistry so out of whack that he acquired Candida, a type of yeast infection. The resulting fatigue made him even more depressed, and he threw himself off the Bloor-DVP bridge. He was still taking his pills at the time.
Our society wants a quick fix to everything, and time and time againtreats the symptom instead of the underlying cause. We create reduced fat food, instead of going to the trouble of getting outside. A war on terrorism to stomp out those who hate us, instead of tackling the problem of why they hate us. A war on drugs, instead of asking why somany people are driven to do drugs.
Is it that we all need pills in order to be happy, or is the problem that we haven’t made a society in which life is worth living?
