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Anti-Depressant Nation
UPDATE, Aug. 8: Back in October, in the heat of the meltdown's mad theater of finger-pointing, I added anti-depressants to gang of culprits in a speculative piece I wrote for the first week of The Daily Beast. At that time, it was—stunningly—difficult to nail down the actual number of people popping those mood-altering miracles. I believe that's because the drug companies don't want us to know how successful they've been at mainstreaming depression and creating brands around its amelioration.
But this week, a study on antidepressant use appeared, and shocked many. The research was done by the Columbia University Medical Center and the University of Pennsylvania, who analyzed data from nearly 20,000 individuals. The findings: Between 1996 and 2005, there was a "marked and broad expansion in antidepressant treatment," with the rate of the medicated population going from 5.8 percent to 10.12 percent. The total number was 27 million people back in 2005, which means today there could be 30 million or more people whose perceptions of reality are being seriously altered. Ironically, if risk distortion and pleasure seeking—neural consequences of these drugs—were partly culpable for the Great Recession, we might very well need these pleasure-seeking millions to start-up those turbines of consumer spending yet again.
Did Lilly help bring down Lehman? Has the marketing of depression been complicit in propelling us to the brink of one?
We've played the blame game with just about everyone else; traders, brokers, ratings agencies, and financial engineers have all done the national perp walk.
But virtually no attention has been paid to whether there was something amiss inside the fevered noggins of those who took on these mortgages, as well as those who created and collateralized them. There are millions of Americans on anti-depressants, and my theory is that many of them might have been medicated into taking on irrational levels of risk.
After all, 237 million prescriptions were written last year for anti-depressants, making them the most prescribed drugs in America. And ironically, the bailout bill is likely to bring out pharmaceutical bliss even more. Because one of the provisions tacked onto the final version is mental health parity, meaning that employers who offer coverage for mental health must offer the same benefits as for medical conditions—the same co-pay, deductible, visits covered.
Perhaps after a little research, the familiar “Do not operate heavy machine when taking this drug” could become “Do not apply for a home-equity loan when taking this drug.”
There are many who argue that anti-depressants got to #1 status because Big Pharma has spent hundreds of millions to create a nation of psychological hypochondriacs using canny marketing to blur the difference between serious depressive states and merely painful, Billie Holiday-like blues.
But what exactly would turn psychotropic drugs like Prozac and Paxil and Zoloft into a subplot in the subprime mess? It's the biochemistry. Those drugs are SSRIs—serotonin uptake inhibitors—and they spin their mood magic by elevating levels of serotonin in the brain. And serotonin is a neurotransmitter associated with behaviors that might contribute to the temptation of borrowing $501,000 on a $500,000 house.
When I asked Dr. Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist who studies brain chemistry, if my hypothesis passes the expert smell test, she replied: "I wouldn't at all be surprised if people taking drugs that elevate their levels of serotonin—which blunt the emotions—make some dumb financial decisions. Our emotions evolved, at least in part, to help us monitor our actions. "
Eli Lilly's website offers a different take on what happens when you change the brain's perception of what's real and what isn't:
"Prozac is one of the world's most widely prescribed antidepressants; it has been prescribed for more than 54 million people worldwide. Chances are, someone you know is getting better because of it."
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Adam Hanft is a decoder of the consumer culture and our branded planet. He blogs for The Huffington Post and FastCompany.com. He is also the co-author of Dictionary of the Future and is founder and CEO of the marketing and branding firm Hanft Raboy. Follow him at Twitter.com/hanft.
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Adam Hanft is a decoder of the consumer culture and our branded planet. He blogs for The Huffington Post and FastCompany.com. He is also the co-author of Dictionary of the Future and is founder and CEO of the marketing and branding firm Hanft Raboy. Follow him at Twitter.com/hanft.
Very Interesting article !
This is nonsense and shows a complete lack of understanding for what antidepressants actually do to the brain.
There are some real flaws in this.
Presumably -- since the side effects of these meds are not insignificant-- people are not taking them for fun, which means that people on these meds had a deficiency of serotonin to begin with. Depression is not just feeling down. It's an actual, unshakable imbalance that needs to be treated. The meds were designed to give depressed people the same balance that people without depression and who are not on meds have, so it's unclear to me why the meds would have the effect of too much serotonin, unless no one is going to doctors to have the meds tracked.
It seems that "to be fair" you would have needed fuller quotes from the experts, including ones who think this is not a real possibility.
Also, there is a chicken-or-egg problem here.
"When I asked him if he has seen patients on these drugs who take financial risks they shouldn't, he said that he sees impulse control problems all the time."
Are those control problems CAUSED by the meds, or are they part of a set of symptoms of a disorder? In this piece, that is unclear.
This question is heightened by the fact that you also touch on ADHD, a disorder which lists irrational risk taking as a symptom. Edward Hallowell, an expert on the subject writes specifically about "high stimulation ADD" which could lead those who have it to take excess risks. So, is it really the Ritalin, or is it the disorder the Ritalin is designed to treat?
People may be so eager to point fingers and to talk about an "over medicated America" that it seems like an easy path to take.
Maybe, instead, we should look at the those who may be depressed and are also affected by this mess who turning to antidepressants as a way to avoid much more horrific outcomes -- like suicide-- rather than blaming the pills that might get them on the right track.
Sounds good to me. LOL!
The flip side is that a happily medicated population is also not as susceptible to the scare tactics and ransom demands that have accompanied the bailout scam.
The scammers say, "Give us $700 billion in unmarked bills or we will crash this economy like a bull in a china shop."
We, the medicated citizens of the US, reply, "Knock yourselves out. Your scare tactics don't work anymore."
We then tell Congress that they will be voted out of office if they fall for the scare tactics and give in to the bailout scam.
A medicated Congress then replies, "Knock yourselves out, my dear constituents. Fear of being thrown out of office doesn't influence my vote anymore on any issues."
Yeah. I really think you've hit upon something here, Mr. Hanft. A fearless population sure does behave differently on the whole. I guess it's something we will have to adjust to going forward.
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Okay, never mind. I thought this was going to be a great site that allowed freedom of expression. I was wrong. I'm outta here. Later alligators. And good luck with the whole "free-flow of ideas" idea.
I love this theory. Paulson must have been on anti-depressants when he bought Fannie and Freddie then got on bended-knee for Pelosi. It's the only explanation for his actions that makes sense.
It may well be that antidepressants, especially the new antidepressants known as SSRIs, have contributed to the financial crisis. One of the adverse reactions in the PDR listed for SSRIs is hypomania. Hypomania can cause excessive risk taking, poor judgement, impulsivity, excessive spending, etc. The person who is hypomanic can still function and is not considered "sick" by his/her relatives, friends and acquaintances.
The FDA issued a General Warning on antidepressants on March 22, 2004. Hypomania was one of the adverse reactions that was mentioned along with other neuropsychiatric side effects.
At www.SSRIstories.comthere are over 2,600 cases of criminal behavior listed and the full media article is available for reading. All the perpetrators were taking an antidepressant and the media article usually states which antidepressant was taken. There are 47 school shootings, including Columbine, and over 600 murders, plus close to 250 murder-suicides and many, many cases of embezzlements, fraud, etc..
It is a National Tragedy.
For the depressant addiction treatment patients should go through medically supervised detoxification because the healing must be progressively tapered. Patient psychoanalysis can assist the person throughout this procedure. Cognitive behavioral remedy, which focuses on modifying the patient's thoughts, prospect, and behaviors, while at the same time rising skills for coping with a variety of life stressors, also has been used effectively to assist persons adapt to the discontinuation of barbiturates and benzodiazepines.
http://www.addiction-treatments.com/
This is an idea so interesting, it keeps coming up. Early in 2000, I published a brief article "Is the Market on Prozac? It was reprinted or referenced in hundreds of publications including the WSJ. See http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/story/100.html It probably was read by more people even than my books on evolution and medicine!
I got calls from dozens of reporters.I asked each to please, please go interview financial workers to gather data about the number of people on Wall Street taking medications. As a social science researcher, it would be very difficult to get permission for a study asking such questions, but reporters are under much looser constraints. So far, no one has done it. Now, almost decade later, we still have only speculation about both the rate of antidepressant use on Wall Street, and the effect of antidepressants on risk taking in market decisions. I rather doubt it is a big effect, but it could be; data are needed.
For another exposition of this idea, see an article by Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal (Saturday/Sunday March 14-15, 2009, p. A9).
Randolph Nessehttp://nesse.us
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