Are We Over-Medicated?

These days I can’t help but notice an epidemic quietly taking hold of the people of this country, and of this world. There have been a few high profile incidents covered by the media but have soon been forgotten. I want to throw off the silk scarf that is clouding our vision, and expose a dark issue that needs more attention.

Are we as a society over-medicated?

When did it become ok to try to fix, hide, or blanket our raw emotions? It is hard to believe that over the last 100 years human beings have developed the thousands of new diseases and problems that are now being treated and diagnosed. Perhaps we haven’t changed, but our perspective has. For example, these days if someone avoids large crowds, is quiet and chooses not to partake in mass socializing, it is thought to be a social disorder causing serious developmental problems and needing medical treatment straight away.

50 years ago it was called being shy.

Perhaps there is a certain comfort in being “diagnosed”. Rather than dealing with certain qualities that make one unique or different, they can now be rest assured that they have a real problem and it can be fixed. The growing obsession of being fixed is slowly eroding the ability to accept oneself as is. I agree that there are illnesses and problems that need treatment, but I don’t agree that the treatment should always be in the form of pills.

Medication seem to be the new band aid fix in order to avoid solving the root cause of issues. Things like depression, anxiety and mood disorders are often treated with medication so strong, that the side effects are often worse than the initial illness. But of course treating those issues with therapy and counseling take patience and time: both of which we have so very little of these days.

Today society is preoccupied with efficiency, speed and agility. We need things done yesterday, and are always late for something. But this obsession with efficiency has spilled over into our health care system, causing quick fixes for problems that need time, and serious attention. The growing addiction to prescription drugs is becoming more apparent and dangerous as seen by the high profile deaths of Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger, and most recently Brittany Murphy, suffering cardiac arrest at the young age of 32.

The world might never slow down, as it has become infatuated with achieving, producing, inventing, developing, and perfecting. But the problems we have created are also growing at twice the speed. And unless we slow down, and analyze the effectiveness of how we treat those problems, we only become more vulnerable.