Your friend has been prescribed what is commonly called a "cocktail". ANYONE taking a comination of too many or the wrong prescriptions is setting themselves up for big problems. This is NOT limited to psychiatric medicatons.
She needs a reputable shrink - FAST!!
Best to you and your friend, ba7
Her story is hardly isolated. I know of others like it personally, have heard of a few more from friends and have read several similar accounts from FReepers. Where would I find this mythical reputable shrink?
HMOs have reduced psychiatry to bottom line financial accounts. Couch time is expensive and hard to show tangible results on paper. Pills are cheap and show immediate results. Whether those results are lasting or even positive is beside the point. A dramatic change in behavior can be succintly written in the patient file.
The further we move towards fully socialistic medicine the more this will occur. When the government finally nationalizes medicine the Congress will be the budgetary overseer with all the political wranglings and influences holding sway over who is treated, what is treated, what treatments are approved and how treatment is administered.
As with SS Congress will rob Peter to pay Paul and there won't be enough money for health care while at the same time scammers will be sucking dry what is available. Name me a politically run industry that hasn't gone that way.
As for my friend, she is doing wonderfully for her age and health conditions and it was never my business to stick my nose in this couples private life. Her husband is far more capable than I. He did a heroic job while the doctors had their hooks in her. As a friend I did what I could to help. Advice was not where I fit in.
Thanks for your well wishes.