[allmendream]

One in four women now take pills for their mental health.

Throughout history have 25% of women been exhibiting mental disability such that pharmacological intervention is warranted - or is it that such drugs are over prescribed?

Once depression was something you experienced and then got over - now it is apparently a condition that requires lifelong pharmacological and psychiatric intervention. LIFELONG.

Add to this the fact that placebo is just about as effective as most antidepressants and we see what this is about.

“Dr. Feel Good has a pill for that honey, all you need to do is have a monthly evaluation ($) and I will write you a prescription to make those blues go away!”

[slowhandluke]

I don't know about 25%, but the numbers used to be higher for both sexes. Then, they discovered penicillin and there syphilis-induced insanity went away, and the could get rid of the looney bins. And I do mean looney bins with the rubber rooms and straightjackets, as the damage that syphilis can do is to render you a raving lunatic.

Chronic Lyme disease is strongly associated with depression, so I think there are still cures to come, but not from the shrinks.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

People use to self-medicate. Opium and alcohol were the most popular ways to make your problems go away. And since beer was considered a perfectly respectable drink from morning to night it was possible to be at least mildly potted most of your waking life.

Back then you were not depressed, you were melancholy. You were not expected to get better and no one was surprised when you died in a strange accident involving a rope and chair or cleaning your gun or possibly ate something that disagreed with you.

Later on they reached for "mother's little helper".

Now people are expected to be sober and functional most of the time.

Sometimes the pills help. Sometimes other things help. But the odd idea that depression and other mental conditions is somehow something that has just appeared is to ignore history.