These statistics have sparked a widespread, sometimes rancorous debate about whether people are taking far more medication than is needed for problems that may not even be mental disorders. Studies indicate that 40% of all patients fall short of the diagnoses that doctors and psychiatrists give them, yet 200 million prescriptions are written annually in America to treat depression and anxiety. Those who defend such widespread use of prescription drugs insist that a significant part of the population is under-treated and, by inference, under-medicated. Those opposed to such rampant use of drugs note that diagnostic rates for bipolar disorder, in particular, have skyrocketed by 4,000% and that overmedication is impossible without over-diagnosis…” — Christopher Lane, professor of English at Northwestern University and author of Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness (The New York Sun op-ed)
A plea, with which as a practicing psychiatrist (even though I have no desire to be out of a job!)I very much agree, for reining in rampant overdiagnosis, setting the bar higher to qualify for having a mental illness, and “resurrecting the distinction between chronic illness and mild suffering.” Lane quite rightly observes that if everyone is mentally ill then no one is.
