01 March 2008
the drugs don't work
It doesn't seem all that surprising that recent research suggests that anti-depressants 'don't work'. It's likely that many people know a lot of people that have been on them at some point, or are still on them (the one way in which these drugs do seem to function like 'proper' drugs is in their addictiveness - those people trying to quite or cut down on their dosage of Seroxat, in particular, seem to undergo all manner of horrific withdrawal symptoms). It's obvious that the clinch between pharma corps and medical practice has been an obscenely close one for a long time, despite the lack of evidence for efficacy or the 'match' of drugs to specific emotional/mental health problems.
The 'guinea-pigging' of vast swathes of the population has, up till now, solved two problems: the 'time' problem (namely, how to avoid addressing the underlying reasons for mental health problems), and how to create new markets amidst the flourishing of generic drug production, particularly outside of the US and Europe. Clearly the interiorisation of unhappiness is far more profitable than the outward realisation that perhaps misery has nothing to do with you personally and everything to do with the world in which you live.
