More Costly Pills, Less Time Talking

Talking it through, over it or around it is not the first option for more psychiatrists in the 21st century. Pills targeted towards specific areas of the brain, psychometric drugs are the new remedies favored by the shrinking class. Scary on multiple levels, but especially since all the pill residue ends up in the drinking water of innocents with other issues.

Psychotherapy since father Freud has undergone profound evolution with the profession now in a pill revolution. In less than ten years since 1996, psychotherapy has gone from about half of the treatment options to less than 30% with the embrace of the pills. At some level of good or for ill (and of course, capitalistic profit motives), Big Pharma has offered a profuse array of colored pills to all manner of specialties in medicine. Mental problems, here's a pill, is something that has pernicious overtones as emergency practitioners may have no idea what mind altering drug someone is taking or what the effects of mixing certain compounds. But an uglier disturbing truth is its all about the money that the pill pushers make. Same economic truth works for Big Pharma as buying crack on the corner. The person that cuts the inefficiencies in the supply chain and controls distribution makes the most money.

"These trends highlight a gradual but important change in the content of outpatient psychiatric care in the United States and a continued shift toward medicalization of psychiatric practice," wrote Drs. Mojtabai and Olfson.

In an interview, Dr. Mojtabai said financial incentives are probably driving the change.

He said that under typical reimbursement rates, a psychiatrist who conducts one 45-minute psychotherapy session will receive 40% less than if he or she saw three patients for 15-minute medication management visits.

It leads to an awful discussion on medical records. If people know what kind of drug your taking, then its a small matter of inference and deduction as to what internal malady one may suffer from. There has been a huge publicity around medical professionals snooping inside medical records. Prescription Pills make that much easier because they go down so well with the TV marketing campaigns that brainwash so many viewers.

As talk therapy declined, TV ads contributed to an "aura of invincibility" around drugs for depression and anxiety, said Charles Barber, a lecturer in psychiatry at Yale University and author of "Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry is Medicating a Nation."

"By contrast, there's almost no marketing for psychotherapy, which has comparable if not better outcomes," said Barber, who was not involved in the study.

Read the book, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry is Medicating a Nation, then really decide whether the latest pill shortcut is in your best interest. Charles Barber cites several studies and gives some astounding insights as author of this book. The particular title of that book seems to be very popular.

PS Ack! Blogger is freaking out and not letting images upload. will put them in later. I need a pill...