Posted on 08/03/2009 7:42:53 PM PDT by mombyprofession
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Use of antidepressant drugs in the United States doubled between 1996 and 2005, probably because of a mix of factors, researchers reported on Monday.
About 6 percent of people were prescribed an antidepressant in 1996 -- 13 million people. This rose to more than 10 percent or 27 million people by 2005, the researchers found.
"Significant increases in antidepressant use were evident across all sociodemographic groups examined, except African Americans," Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia University in New York and Steven Marcus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia wrote in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
"Not only are more U.S. residents being treated with antidepressants, but also those who are being treated are receiving more antidepressant prescriptions," they added.
More than 164 million prescriptions were written in 2008 for antidepressants, totaling $9.6 billion in U.S. sales, according to IMS Health.
Drugs that affect the brain chemical serotonin like GlaxoSmithKline's Paxil, known generically as paroxetine, and Eli Lilly and Co's Prozac, known generically as fluoxetine, are the most commonly prescribed class of antidepressant. But the study found the effect in all classes of the drugs.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
With this president that will triple, at the very least.
Turns out the whole country was on St. John Wort - a natural antidepressant - just enough to "take the edge off" much needed guilt...
There are two big causes of this. They are the stressful economic times and the public schools. With Obama in office, look for it to double again. Who knows, maybe some of us will need them before long.
My, how depressing a story.
I’d love to run a cross-tab on how many of these pill poppers voted for Barry. Gut feeling, tells me at least 65%.
who cares? nobody. and what if they did? it wouldn't matter anyway. nothing matters. and what if it did? nobody would care.
I bet Obama bought stock in Pfizer before the election.
depressing? well, take one of these
?
LOL! Great link!
You gotta watch it like 10 times to read all of the hysterically funny “side effects” listed.
;]
?
Sure, more than 9% have had the flu, or the chicken-pocks or some other sickness, but it's "at the same time" that is disturbing, at least to me.
O-hole’s fault.
Actually, I think the true figures are that about 1 in 4 are taking some form of antidepressent or tranquilizers.
Many persons don’t even know that is what they are taking. Fluoxetine (prozac) for several years now has been prescribed for severe PMS in women (no joke). Physicians also routinely prescribe Diazapam as a muscle relaxant. Diazapam is also known as Valium.
My goodness, even the military issues Diazapam as one of three drugs used to treat a nerve agent victim (atropine being another).
Use of psychotrophic medications has become widely accepted. They have proven to be very useful for many persons previously impaired. Prozac is almost something of a miracle drug in some cases.
Abortion!
I’ll bet 80 percent of Democrats are on them.
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