Overly Depressed?

Recent reports on Depression have led to some seriously conflicting opinions from experts. And while I'm no expert (on anything, really), I do have opinions, and I thought I would weigh-in on this important issue:

Is Depression being over-diagnosed? Maybe, but I really don't think that's the problem; I think antidepressants are being over prescribed. Depression can be a real mental illness, but it can also be an emotional state, and - as one expert puts it - it has become a catch-all diagnosis "driven by clever marketing."

As I have said time and again - and will continue to say until people start listening - a lot of mental issues can be helped, if not outright "cured," by any number of methods aside from medication. In particular, talk therapy is one of the most powerful tools too rarely employed. I have often said - and will continue to say until people start admitting it - that this is a matter of collusion: the pharmaceutical companies are making money hand-over-fist with these barely-tested medications that handle everything from the sniffles to simple boredom. And the doctors are getting a free-ride for prescribing them as soon as a patient mentions he "just doesn't feel right."

Several years back, every teenager who stole a car or smoked a joint was automatically labeled "Bi-Polar" and they were giving out extremely powerful, psychotropic drugs that, years later, were found to have side effects ranging from suicidal and homicidal tendencies to sudden cardiac arrest! Not to mention the literally thousands of children who are put on Ritalin - the pharmaceutical equivalent of cocaine - every year because they have "short attention spans" in school.

Kids - little kids. With short attention spans. In school.

Go figure.

Why is it that when a patient is thought to have something like cancer or MS or any kind of serious physical illness, they are put through a battery of rigorous tests over the course of several weeks - even months -before a proper diagnosis is made, but whenever they "just don't feel right," they are immediately prescribed medication? And then more medication to counteract the severe side effects caused by the first medication? And then other meds to counteract the side-effects caused by the medications prescribed to counteract the side-effects caused by the first medication? And then a proper follow-up is made only to "adjust the levels" of the medications, instead of evaluating the state of the patient's health?

No wonder so few Americans can afford medical insurance: the minute they walk into the doctor's office, they have already maxed-out their coverage for the year.