Happiness pills

A reflection on the risks of assuming that bad times should be treated with drugs.

Spain is at the head of the consumption of psychotropic drugs.These are understood as drugs that act on the brain to produce psychological effects.

We are above the European average in terms of consumption of anxiolytics and benzodiazepines. Anxiolytics, antidepressants and sleeping pills are prescribed without thinking too much about their possible side effects and without considering psychotherapy as a first option.

Why does this happen?

There are multiple associated factors that explain the medicalization of psychological well-being, among them, its low economic cost, with a box of some of these drugs costing between 1 and 3 euros, although their cost has fallen in recent years.

On the other hand, it is very easy to access psychotropic drugs; it is enough for the physician at the health center to prescribe them, i.e., it is not necessary for a mental health professional to do so. It can be very simple if people report symptoms that may resemble anxiety, depression and insomnia; however, it is most likely that we are not talking about depression, but sadness, and that we are not talking about pathological anxiety or that, even if this were the case, this problem could be solved with psychotherapy.

But, and we come to the third reason... how is a doctor going to refer a person to psychotherapy when there are hardly any psychologists in the Social Security system? Specifically, there are 4 psychologists and 6 psychiatrists for every hundred thousand inhabitants. Doctors, therefore, are almost obliged to pre-write them in order to offer some "solution" to the patient..

The concept of happiness pills

On the other hand, it is necessary to take into account that we are almost obliged to be happy and to feel well at all times. For that reason, when the person feels sadness, nerves, goes through a bereavement? he/she notices that something is not going well inside him/herself and that he/she has to take some pill to "cure" him/her.. But what if going through that sadness, feeling anxiety, mourning a loss... is healthy, necessary and adaptive?

Stress, frustrations or Pain are less and less tolerated, so the person looks for a cure.However, in this way, we may be undermining our coping abilities.

It is also necessary to talk about the normalization of these consumptions. Few families do not have a member who consumes psychotropic drugs, it is something very normalized, which is a clear factor that has an impact on this increase in consumption.

Unhealthy lifestyles

Stress and our poor sleep hygiene, combined with an increasingly worrying use of technology, have led to an increase in the use of drugs to fall asleep, despite the fact that they have been shown to help sleep but not to rest, generating a feeling of heaviness and apathy in the person that is rarely taken into account before taking them.

The problem of overdiagnosis

Another relevant factor is the tendency to overdiagnose and overmedicalize in our society. and medicalization in our society, which we can see in the new versions of the DSM, in the medicalization with psychotropic drugs of minors, etc. All this very much influenced by the interests of the pharmaceutical industry.

What can be the consequences of taking this type of drugs?

In the first place, dependence can be generated. Addiction to psychotropic drugs is increasing, and they are among the most addictive drugs at present.

Most psychotropic drugs create physical dependence, i.e., the consumer's body will show withdrawal symptoms when consumption ceases and, on the other hand, psychological dependence arises: the brain becomes accustomed to this substance and will demand greater quantities, and may reach the point of no longer being able to use it.The brain becomes accustomed to this substance and will demand larger quantities, and may even reach the point of not being able to sleep or function on a day-to-day basis without these pills.

If we are prescribed a pill that we take when we are nervous and another one when we are sad, what happens if we are nervous or sad and we do not have it? We are likely to feel that we are not able to cope with that discomfort.

Adverse side effects must also be taken into account.. Although in the short term anxiolytics can reduce our symptomatology (antidepressants need weeks to develop their effects), in the short and long term they can have very considerable adverse side effects.

On the other hand, as we mentioned, it can reduce the anxious or depressive symptomatology, among others, but not solve the problem in question, and not put us to work on it and on the focus of the problem because it reduces this symptomatology and makes us believe that the problem has been solved, being likely to reappear.

Conclusion

In Mariva Psicólogos we think that, although it is true that psychotropic drugs may be necessary, and even more so when we talk about serious psychopathology, we must be cautious when resorting to them. and consider whether going to psychotherapy and betting on our mental health, even if it requires more personal effort, is more beneficial. If medication is required, our psychologist will recommend it, and we can combine pharmacology and therapy.