Human Interest This Teen Was Prescribed 10 Psychiatric Drugs. She’s Not Alone.

[thegreenhand]

This Teen Was Prescribed 10 Psychiatric Drugs. She’s Not Alone.​

Matt Richtel, Annie Flanagan
New York Times
27 Aug 2022

Excerpt:

One morning in the fall of 2017, Renae Smith, a high school freshman on Long Island, N.Y., could not get out of bed, overwhelmed at the prospect of going to school. In the following days, her anxiety mounted into despair.

“I should have been happy,” she later wrote. “But I cried, screamed and begged the universe or whatever godly power to take away the pain of a thousand men that was trapped inside my head.”

Intervention for her depression and anxiety came not from the divine but from the pharmaceutical industry. The following spring, a psychiatrist prescribed Prozac. The medication offered a reprieve from her suffering, but the effect dissipated, so she was prescribed an additional antidepressant, Effexor.

A medication cascade had begun. During 2021, the year she graduated, she was prescribed seven drugs. These included one for seizures and migraines — she experienced neither, but the drug can be also used to stabilize mood — and another to dull the side effects of the other medications, although it is used mainly for schizophrenia. She felt better some days but deeply sad on others.

 

[thegreenhand]

imo this is the natural consequence of our society segregating our psychotherapy services from our psychopharmacology services

idk whether that means we should have psychiatrists learning psychoanalysis or psychologists learning pharmacology (probably both tbh). but something needs to change.

 

[Electrum1]

Doctors should be outlawed from receiving kickbacks from drug companies. I think it may have been outlawed for Medicare and Medicaid patients and hospital referrals, but I'm not up to date on the topic

 

[thegreenhand]

Doctors should be outlawed from receiving kickbacks from drug companies. I think it may have been outlawed for Medicare and Medicaid patients and hospital referrals, but I'm not up to date on the topic

another argument for public healthcare imo