Drugs not always the answer for depression

MARY MADDOCK never imagined she would one day kick her dependence on three mind-altering drugs she was told she needed to take to treat her manic depression.

The Cork woman spent almost 15 years on these drugs, most of her married life, because she assumed she was mentally ill.

“I was like a zombie and could not even do simple functions or try anything new - I had 15 different side effects from these drugs,” Mary said.

She was diagnosed with depression in her early 30s and anti-depressant drugs were doled out as the answer to extreme emotions.

“If you cried too much or laughed too much the doctors could not deal with you, and drugs were the easy answer,” Mary said.

But after a long struggle Mary started to try to wean herself off the drugs, and her first success was when she stopped taking a drug supposed to deal with her hallucinations.

“When I came off that drug I had no more hallucinations and, with the help of a very good doctor, I gradually weaned myself off the other two drugs,” she said.

At 50, she met Dr Terry Lynch, whose book Beyond Prozac was the first serious challenge to the medical profession’s over-reliance on prescribing anti-depressant drugs.

“Dr Lynch kept me off the drugs and was a great help to me in achieving a full recovery,” Mary said.

A recent survey of doctors in one Dublin health board area found 68% of GPs indicated they had no specific training in mental health.

Dr Lynch, who worked as a GP for over 20 years, said doctors needed to retrain because they did not understand mental health.

“Pharmaceutical companies have mastered how to influence doctors, and a few minutes after the patient’s tears start, out come the prescription pads - this is just outrageous,” Dr Lynch said.

A recent Prime Time survey of 15 GPs found more than half of them prescribed drugs - even if the patients did not have the classic depression symptoms used as a yardstick by the World Health Organisation.

The wholesale cost of anti-depressant drugs has gone up from e8 million in 1993 to e50m in 2002.

But despite this massive increase, a higher number of people were admitted to psychiatric hospitals in that period, said Dr Lynch.

“Doctors need to look beyond the medical, drug-based model that will allow the patient to recover their self confidence again and get their life back again,” Dr Lynch said.

A doctor can help a patient recover from depression if they give the time to discover the root of the distress and then join with the patient in their goal of getting their life back on track, Dr Lynch also commented.