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.

Dr Herlihy maintains that people’s choice of treatment option “relates to issues around personal preference and changes in society as a whole”. Hard to fathom what this means exactly, in light of the statutorily imbedded ‘psychiatric/biomedical’ weave having more or less full controlling legitimacy and recognition, while other psychodynamic philosophies have little or none of same.

Psychosocial distress need never be a ‘medicalised’ issue, if societal and communal influence and authentic statutory appraisal hold full and appropriate sway. This has all been aired in many forums worldwide, and written about for years.

So, while it’s not ‘new’ news, it continues to be faded and forgotten as the ‘powers’ continue to cultivate their ‘pharming’.

Jim Cosgrove

Lismore

Co Waterford