Why this ‘pharming’ has to stop

Dr Daniel Herlihy (Letters Apr 12) adopts something of a classic QED approach when it comes to assessing medical GPs’ response to personal distress issues such as examination anxiety: “I would say that if one attends a medical doctor with symptoms then one can reasonably expect a medical approach to alleviating those symptoms, given that is what doctors are trained to do.”

He offers this assessment with disturbingly comfortable aplomb, given that his comments are linked to a sequence of opinions originating in an indictment of the over-prescription of anti-depressants for anxious college students.

It would appear thus, that someone with a life-distress issue, if presenting to a doctor, might have only one obvious treatment upshot — prescription of anti-depressants.