{"id":985,"date":"2008-02-25T09:45:39","date_gmt":"2008-02-25T09:45:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/2008\/02\/judith-warner-overselling-over.html"},"modified":"2008-02-25T09:45:39","modified_gmt":"2008-02-25T09:45:39","slug":"judith-warner-overselling-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/02\/judith-warner-overselling-over.html","title":{"rendered":"Judith Warner: Overselling Overmedication"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"photo_warner.jpg\"
\nThanks to Beyond Blue<\/a> readers Barbara (formerly known as “Babs”) and NYJLM (who writes her own blog, “So Love Is Hard and Love Is Tough”<\/a> for forwarding me the link to Judith Warner’s opinion piece, “Overselling Overmedication” <\/a>about the volumes of literature coming out these days about America, the Nation of Prozac, where overmedication is the norm.
\nI feared her article was yet another “anti-medication” treatise–and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been a bit fragile and grumpy as of late–so I tucked it away for a time when I was more chemically imbalanced, well fed and exercised, to read on an afternoon I was less angry at all the people who pontificate against drugs.
\nThat moment never came, but I read her article anyway, and was very delighted by her nuanced argument, not to mention the exhaustive research she had done before penning a piece that touches our territory.
\nI’ve excerpted a few paragraphs from her piece, but it is worth going to her blog yourself (by clicking here) and reading the entire thing. <\/a>
\nThanks, Judith! You make me less angry! Hooray!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s get beyond statistics, percentage changes in diagnosis rates and billions earned off human suffering by Big Pharma. And let\u2019s just try for a moment to get real.
\nMost of the critics decrying the over-medicalization of the American mind rest their arguments upon the bedrock assumption that people who have nothing wrong with them \u2013 happy-go-lucky types who essentially make a wrong turn on their way to Starbucks or soccer and end up in the consulting room \u2013 are being medicated for largely fictitious concerns.
\nBut search your minds and memories: Have you, or people close to you, ever taken medication in a lazy or thoughtless way? Eagerly? As a lark? Ask around a bit; find out what kind of desperation led others to the point where they had to accept psychopharmacological help.
\n(Write and tell me. Tell us all. But please don\u2019t send abstract social observations or share stories about people you don\u2019t actually know. First-hand knowledge and real life only, thanks.)
\nThe psychiatrists I\u2019ve interviewed over the course of the past four years say that they have yet to be swamped by frivolous patients showing up in their offices looking for pills to help them tweak troublesome little aspects of their personalities. \u201cNot only have I not encountered many [such patients], I haven\u2019t encountered any in my office or even in detailed phone calls,\u201d Kramer, most recently, told me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks to Beyond Blue readers Barbara (formerly known as “Babs”) and NYJLM (who writes her own blog, “So Love Is Hard and Love Is Tough” for forwarding me the link to Judith Warner’s opinion piece, “Overselling Overmedication” about the volumes of literature coming out these days about America, the Nation of Prozac, where overmedication is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-depression"],"yoast_head":"\nJudith Warner: Overselling Overmedication - Beyond Blue<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/02\/judith-warner-overselling-over.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Judith Warner: Overselling Overmedication - 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