GPs Must Pause Before Diagnosing, Prescribing Antidepressants

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From the Irish Examiner: “The fact that GPs are the first port of call for people in distress is something I think we as a society need to question. Why do we encourage people in very low mood and typically with complicated mental and emotional struggles to seek help from a professional who has 10 to 15 minutes to try to alleviate their distress?

GPs are encouraged and trained as doctors to give proactive medical responses to states of distress within this 10–15-minute consultation framework.

They do this by putting people into diagnostic boxes. Each of these diagnostic boxes (for example, depression) is associated with specific drugs that the doctor will immediately call to mind – and in the case of depression, these will be antidepressants.

Many GPs I speak with are frustrated because they understand the limitations of psychopharmacology, they recognise the need for a range of responses to human distress and they are mindful of the social and personal determinants of mental health – they deal daily with ordinary people trying their best to manage the ups and downs of life. This whole system needs rethinking and remodelling in order to avoid more and more people being inappropriately prescribed antidepressant medications for lack of alternatives – drugs that may be doing them more harm than good.”

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  3. As a kitchen bath designer, I would meet with clients for as long as they wished usually. We would discuss their likes, dislikes, and I would get a feel for who they were, and what it was they were hoping to see as an end result. I would usually sleep on it, and dream about the meeting, prior to coming up with potential designs for my clients. I rarely didn’t make the sale, and end up with very happy clients.

    As a matter of fact, I even turned a likely $2000 sale (laundry room backsplash) into a $70,000 wainscoted laundry room sale, for clients I never even met. I never met the clients because they were from Georgia, and had sent the president of their company, who had previously been in the kitchen bath design industry in Chicago, to the top five Chicago area residential design firms to get designs.

    But what I did know about this client was that he was a “junk bond king,” which of course meant, for him and his wife, money was no object. So I drew up my customary two basic backsplash designs, as was requested. But I bothered to take the time to draw up the wainscoted laundry room design as well, which had not been requested. Guess who won that little design competition?

    My point is that it is common sense that the PCPs should absolutely not be prescribing the psychiatric neurotoxins to people they do not know, aside from 10-15 minute appointments, and when their client is feeling at their worst.

    Absolutely, “This whole system needs rethinking and remodeling in order to avoid more and more people being inappropriately prescribed antidepressant medications for lack of alternatives – drugs that may be doing them more harm than good.”

    “It is far more important to know what person the disease has than what disease the person has.” It’s a shame our mainstream medical doctors have totally forgotten the wisdom of Hippocrates. And forgotten that the psychiatrists have always been the dumbest doctors of all. The PCPs should not be allowed to prescribe the psychiatric neurotoxins, especially under the guise of “safe … meds.”

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  5. It would be appropriate to inform the GP’s that depression isn’t a disease, but a syndrome ( a recurring collection of signs and symptoms)that can have multiple causes. Since shrinks are frequently out of their leagues when it comes to general medicine, it’s the duty of the GP to quickly tease out the alternative ailments that (A) aren’t responsive to psych drugs, and (B) will respond to “ordinary” medical treatments before reaching for his prescription pad to prescribe an SSRI (or other) antidepressants.

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