Exposure to pesticides is linked to significant increases in suicidal depression in farmers, according to a study by US National Institute of Health researchers discussed in Munchies. “These dangerous chemicals, researchers found, alter farmers’ brain chemistry, increasing their risk of depression by up to 90 percent.”
Pesticides are Causing Farmers to Become Suicidally Depressed (Munchies, October 27, 2014)
Maybe one of the places to look for solutions to “global rise in mental illness”. Curbing down on agricultural toxins may help your mood and save the bees. Pumping people full of psych drugs is likely to make them even worse and it also affects environment (by psych drugs present in waste water).
Pesticide ?
The very first “antipsychotic,” chlorpromazine, was developed by the French from a compound (phenothiazine) used as a pesticide, specifically to kill parasites in pigs. In other words, the pre-clinical use of chlorpromazine’s primogeniture was as a toxin. After chlorpromazine made it big, other pharmaceutical companies isolated similar compounds by testing whether or not they induced catalepsy, or lack of motor movement, in animals.
