Is America Overmedicated?

Rose Harmon

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The Smartie Newsletter

7 min readOct 3, 2022

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Disclaimer:
The intent of this article is not to shame anyone who takes medication, only to ask questions I feel are valid about the subject. The aim is not to be contentious but to simply address. I am genuinely curious about these issues — I care — and I feel the conversation is not only necessary but of imminent importance. Enjoy the read.

For about forty years, scientists have simplified depression to chemical imbalances, specifically to depletions of serotonin. This theory led to an increased prescription of antidepressants, like Prozac, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) introduced in the 1980s. It’s one of the oldest and most prolific examples of serotonin-balancing treatment, which works like most SSRIs by “preventing the brain from reabsorbing naturally occurring serotonin…In this way, Prozac helps the brain to maintain enough serotonin so that you have a feeling of well-being….” In short, if low serotonin levels equate to sadder emotions, higher levels equate to happier emotions. This theory has validated dozens of drugs like Prozac, working “by preventing [this] reabsorption so [that] serotonin remains in the active synapse area [the space between neurons, which transmit the serotonin] and can be used over and over.” In short, Prozac, Tricyclics (the first antidepressants), and others are used on the belief that serotonin levels are the main cause of depression.

However there are “studies show[ing] that 60–70% of depressed patients do not respond to Prozac or similar drugs.”

In the past year, several studies (see this article for more information, and an argument on the simplification of this theory) have revealed serotonin depletion is not conclusively a reason for depression. The most notable: an experiment where animals and humans were fed “a diet high in large neutral amino acids; this diet effectively reduced the availability of tryptophan to the brain and greatly reduced the production of serotonin in the brain leading to symptoms of depression….” Other trials resulted in antidepressants helping only slightly more than placebos.

Of course, mistakes are prevalent in any field of study, but the fact that “most of the available antidepressant drugs do one thing: they selectively block reuptake” and “1 in 10” Americans are on antidepressants, means that this mistake is not minor. In fact, thousands are affected by inadequate testing and misjudged FDA approval: antidepressants are currently “the most commonly prescribed type of drug in the U.S.” and therefore warrants the questions: are these drugs even effective, are they damaging, and are they unnecessary?

First, what does overmedicated exactly mean? For instance, the American population from 1980 to 2022 has experienced an increase of 46.1% meaning that simply the number of drugs prescribed might not be an accurate sign of overmedication. Also, “Since 1980, people 65 and older have increased from 11.3% to 16.8% of the total [American] population” meaning that because the American demographic is older, and more needful of medication than younger people, this might skew the statistics attempting to answer this question of overmedication. More specifically, “People age 65 and older make up 12 percent of the U.S. population, but account for 34 percent of all prescription medication…” Americans are also not as healthy as they once were, and the lifestyle problems Americans have created such as working desk jobs when it leads to atrophy of the body or reliance on fast food might be the problems in the first place, not the drugs we create to fix them. Perhaps the real solutions are in lifestyle changes. “The average American is older, heavier, with more hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, osteoporosis and arthritis than a generation ago,” and as efficiency and speed are heavily praised in society, fast-working drugs rather than slower, more time-consuming methods such as exercise. Medication is important in many cases, but my personal belief is that the pendulum has switched sides: at first, America practiced severe abstinence when it came to medicating the mentally ill (stigmatizing it harshly), but now is trusting medication to an extreme.

Finally, another question is about the effectiveness of simultaneous medication as well as moderate usage. For instance, “In one study, diabetic patients taking an average of 3.4 drugs to lower systolic blood pressure to less than 120 had more complications than those who took only two drugs to lower their pressures to under 140.” If one thing separating medical drugs from other blatantly harmful drugs is the ability to regulate usage (to not get addicted or reliant on them to function) then there is little difference between recreational drugs and FDA approved drugs at the moment.

Even if these medications do help: Drugs shouldn’t be the first option. For instance, if you were feeling depressed, nearly everyone would tell you that drinking isn’t the answer, but allowing someone to take pharmaceutical drugs without extensive questioning is also irresponsible. And even if these drugs actually do yield results, are they actually more harmful than the syndromes and diseases they treat? Watch this Pristiq commercial, for example, and listen to the effects for the antidepressant (one of which, ironically, is increase suicidal thoughts, the exact thing it seeks to combat). Click here to see a parody of the drug infomercials all Americans cringe to see.

But while most Americans laugh at the obvious flaws of these commercials, they do work, leading to the next controversy surrounding over-prescription and medication: money. Just in 2020, the U.S. pharmaceutical industry made $425 billion in annual revenue — that’s more than what the government spent in 2022 on education and science spending combined. And not only is the revenue great, but “about three-quarters of newly approved drugs [are] similar to existing ones in chemical makeup or therapeutic value. Confronted with mounting costs, drug makers churn out uninspired sequels like Hollywood.” When confronted with these facts, a consumer has to ask if the pharmaceutical industry has something of a Munchausen syndrome, because otherwise, it just appears unnecessary and even greedy. Thinking back to the drug market’s largest demographic of elderly people matched with this Hollywood marketing, what happens when older people, already sick and vulnerable, are confronted with massive drug campagnes? Five percent of American senior citizens (2–3 million people) are tricked by some scam every year. When people are sick, they are desperate for a cure; when people are sick and elderly, they are sick, desperate for a cure, and often alone when making medical decisions backed by the motive of money.

Even more, if mass media can create a drug culture via marketing companies, how is the public sure that the normalization of drugs and diseases like depression and anxiety has not been romanticized? The very idea of taking medication has socially changed over the past few years, and how are we sure that this need view is healthy? Through the process of romanticization, disorders have become coveted, leading to self and maybe even professional diagnoses. Has normalization become manifestation? Has the conversation on mental health has become ubiquitous that the disease itself has become a trend? If this is true, that people have romanticized mental illness, maybe doctors have too. They are, afterall, just people. “The overdiagnosis of mental disorders has recently gotten out of hand with faddish, false epidemics,” one source says. “Childhood bipolar disorder [has] (increased by forty fold), autism (increased by twenty fold), and attention deficit (doubled). One quarter of the general population would now qualify for a diagnosis in any given year, more than half lifetime.”

The mind is complex, and the resources scientists are given to understand it are limited. But isn’t no solution better than the wrong one? At least for a short amount of time? Just this year scientists have realized how little is actually known about depression, and with the alleged rise of people who are diagnosed, we must be asking the question: do more people have it or is it being over-prescribed, and how can we fix something when we don’t even know how it broke apart in the first place? The definition of mental illness, and the symptoms that follow, are vague, so “It simply makes no sense that the antipsychotics are now the largest revenue producers among all classes of medicines — bringing in $15 billion per year.”

Is America depressed or misdiagnosed? Not only is it irresponsible of the prescribers to allow this problem to grow, but many of these antipsychotics increase the risks of diabetes, shortened-life expectancy, and heart disease. It also doesn’t help that these prescribers are normally primary care doctors who do not have the training of psychiatrists, the ones who should be solely responsible for giving the prescriptions.

Is America overmedicated? Well, the average person in America buys more medicine than the average person in any other country, and drug sales have gone up by eleven percent in the past five years, but again, is America ailing, is it depressed, or is it simply over-prescribed?

Is America Overmedicated?

Sources
(In Order of Quotation)

Written by Rose Harmon

Is America Overmedicated?

Sources(In Order of Quotation)

Written by Rose Harmon

Sources
(In Order of Quotation)