Doctors are prescribing more and more antidepressants

The depressing news that doctors are prescribing more and more antidepressants, e.g. Prozac, has been widely reported this week, and it has been suggested that debt and job worries have contributed to this situation. It has also been suggested by Dr Clare Gerada, head of the Royal College of GPs, in this BBC News report, that "some of the rise in prescribing was also likely to be due to increased awareness about the condition and doctors getting better at diagnosis."

Let's just have a think about this. - Yes, there will certainly be more people with money problems and worries, and worries about having lost their jobs or whether they will be losing their jobs. To feel depressed/upset/worried is normal in these circumstances. - How does it help at all to label this normal reaction a mental illness with a catchall name of Depression? And how can taking psychotropic drugs help with money problems or with holding onto a job or obtaining another job? - It can't.

Drugs cannot help with the practical problems of being short of money or being out of work. Nor do they help lift the spirits, despite their erroneously being referred to sometimes as 'happy pills'. Antidepressant drugs work no better than dummy pills , and they frequently cause great harm (adverse side-effects) to the people who take them.

I wonder whether Dr Gerada has considered getting a job as a comedian? The idea that doctors are 'getting better at diagnosis' of 'depression' has me in stitches...(o: - Every time we read a newspaper there is some spokesperson or other explaining that depression/mental illness is on the rise, and that 1 in ? of us (insert your own figures for the incidence of this putative illness) will experience it before we die. It would be a good idea if doctors were to give up 'diagnosing depression' and making their patients more ill by prescribing toxic antidepressants, and instead ordered tests for anaemia, vitamin D deficiency, etc. and concentrated on helping the patients by advocating dietary changes where necessary, and prescribing vitamin and mineral supplements to remedy nutritional problems. - This would undoubtedly make their patients feel a lot better and would make them physically and mentally much more efficient and so more likely to remain/become employed.

The Population Debate, radio discussion on the World Service's One Planet

I listened to this interesting programme early this morning. You can listen using iPlayer here.

"The number of people living on the planet is rising and we are approaching the seven billion inhabitants mark......

This week, the UN published its latest projections for the world's population, so One Planet's taken the opportunity to take another look at the topic of humanity's numbers.

Three guests from around the world join Mike to discuss the issue. In London we have John Guillebaud from the Optimum Population Trust; from New York Matthew Connelly, author of Fatal Misconception; and from Calcutta, the social demographer Alaka Basu. Plus we hear reports from Uganda - a country with one of the fastest birth rates in the world - and from Japan, a country that is suffering a decline in its population."

They consider whether family sizes should be deliberately limited and whether this should always be voluntary. (There is a view that it is the rich people who most need to limit family size because they are the people who are most profligate in their usage of the planet's resources.) They do not, of course, discuss intentionally reducing population size by famine, war and pestilence! - But here is a webpage arguing that the Pharmaceutical Drug Cartel is already embarked on "chemical warfare" using toxic drugs. Before you dismiss this idea as fanciful, consider the terrible harm done by the majority of pharmaceutical drugs, the fraudulent claims made by the drugs companies, the times they have been sued for suppressing evidence of adverse effects from their products, their bribery and corruption of doctors, influential politicians and others, the drug trial scandals, etc.