COMMENT POSTED TO AN ITEM ON YOUTUBE
A Prescription for
Murder
This is just appallingly ignorant.
SSRIs help millions with anxiety and certain kinds of
depression. Millions.
As with any other medication, they can be wrongly prescribed
and likely are.
And that is especially true when underqualified, and
sometimes incompetent, general practitioners prescribe them where they are not
indicated.
It is a matter of simple fact that medical malpractice in
the US kills more people every year than all highway accidents and all murders
combined.
Part of that malpractice is doing the wrong procedure or
giving the wrong drug.
It happens daily somewhere.
One of the symptoms of terrible psychoses like
Manic-Depression and Schizophrenia is depression. I have no doubt some under-qualified
GPs prescribe the wrong medication. SSRIs work well for only for a limited
range of anxieties and depressions - not all of them, not for psychoses.
I am also aware that some American GPs prescribe SSRIs on a
temporary basis to patients feeling low. That is just plain wrong.
People who need SSRIs face the same kind of lifetime
commitment as people using something like transplant-rejection suppressants or
insulin for diabetics.
It is not a drug you take like aspirin for a temporary
headache.
The limited number of cases - and the number is extremely
small out of the many millions using these drugs - cited in the press about the
danger of SSRIs are almost certainly patients who have been wrongly prescribed
by not-well-informed GPS.
