
More than 1/3 of American adults take prescription drugs linked to depression - yulaow
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/12/more-than-a-third-of-american-adults-take-prescription-drugs-that-may-increase-risk-of-depression-study-says/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ebe3473f95f7
======
StevePerkins
The headline is a bit confusing. At first glance it might seem to say that 1/3
of Americans take anti-depressants. What it's actually trying to say is that
1/3 of Americans take prescription drugs that have depression as a possible
side effect.

Even that seems bizarre to me. What is the percentage of Americans who take
prescription drugs... period? I'm a middle-aged man, and (knock on wood!)
still haven't come down with any chronic conditions requiring medication. So I
would probably assume that no more than 1/3 of Americans take ongoing
prescription drugs at all.

Which means I'd have to presume that pretty much all drugs have depression as
a possible side effect.

~~~
lordCarbonFiber
As a middle aged man I assume you're not on birth control, a prescription drug
whose side effects can include depression. I would not be surprised to find
that prescription birth control makes up the lion's share of the third of the
adults counted in the article.

Based on my family's anecdotes it seems even discounting even the
contraceptive angle, hormonal BC seems to be the crude implement to treating a
host of female health issues we don't under stand very well.

~~~
sandworm101
No doubt contraceptives are a part, but they are actually taken by a small
minority of people. They are only applicable to relatively young females,
those capable of having children. Younger children and older women aren't much
of a market. Depending on what ages you want to pick, the applicable
population is probably less than 1/4 the total, with a smaller subset of that
actually taking.

A quick googling says that 28% of women of "reproductive age" use the pill,
which by my math is about 14% of women overall and 7% of the total population.

~~~
bryondowd
What math are you using? By my understanding, women are able to reproduce for
around or close to half their lives.

First result[1] I found while googling defines women of reproductive age as
15-49, and claims that group makes up 24% of the overall population, which
would line up with my intuition.

[1] PDF
[http://www.who.int/management/UsingDataToImproveServiceDeliv...](http://www.who.int/management/UsingDataToImproveServiceDeliveryAnnexes.pdf)

EDIT: Ah, reread your comment, looks like your math lines up with mine, just
misunderstood. Thought you meant 7% of the population were women of
reproductive age, not that 7% of the population were women of reproductive age
on the pill.

Although it also makes me wonder if a sizable percentage of women outside
reproductive age are on the pill. Either because they are fertile longer than
average, or as treatment for other conditions.

~~~
joveian
Hormone Replacement Therapy is similar.

------
megaman22
Slightly confusing title, but this is about drugs for other conditions that
can include causing depression as a side-effect. Not the percentage that are
taking anti-depressants.

A little bit of a vicious circle... 1.) You have symptoms of conditions that
are exacerbated by depression. 2.) Buy drugs to treat those symptoms 3.) Drugs
exacerbate depression 4.) Get anti-depressants to combat depression 4.) Anti-
depressants have deleterious side-effects in other areas 5.) Goto 1

~~~
pitaj
There are also a lot of cases where things like mineral deficiencies cause
depression symptoms, and then SSRI antidepressants make them much worse.

------
twirlip
And that doesn't include self-medication with alcohol or marijuana and so
forth.

~~~
mkirklions
Admittedly I 'self-medicate' with marijuana. It has completely transformed me.
I used to play video games and basically do nothing, but with marijuana I'm
insanely productive.

I'm talking do the 9-5 on coffee only, then go home and worth 4-6 more hours
on programming projects.

I have a fanbase for my website, I have transformed my programming abilities,
and I've grown a non-profit.

I'm not sure I can work this many hours daily completely sober. My bigger
concern is how many years I can work like this. This is year 3.

~~~
fhood
Dammit, yet another weirdo ruining marijuana's carefully cultivated slacker
image. ;)

I have a friend who reacts to marijuana similarly to what you describe and it
still boggles my mind that two people can take the same drug and react in
nearly opposite ways.

~~~
rc_hadoken
Anecdote: My mom has never done any drugs etc but first time she caught me
smoking she said: "some people do drugs, drugs do most people". I'll never
forget and it's true in my experience.

~~~
jasonmp85
Inanity masquerading as profundity.

------
sandworm101
>> "The study analyzed a detailed survey of thousands of American adults taken
every two years between 2005 and 2014, in which people opened their medicine
cabinets and showed researchers all the prescription drugs they had taken in
the last month."

So the methodology and therefore tittle is a little misleading. This is about
people who have been prescribed something and have taken it in the last month.
Those taking prescription drugs without a prescription probably don't admit
this in surveys. All the off-prescription opioid addicts are not represented.
The title should be that 1/3 of Americans have been prescribed drugs.

I'd rather see data from pharmaceutical manufacturers. I'd be interested in
how many tons of depression-linked medication is being consumed, from which we
can estimate the total number of 'prescriptions' that are active. That would
cover the off-prescription consumption too.

------
horsecaptin
Do 1/3rd of Americans need to take prescription drugs on a regular basis? If
that's the case then alarm bells should be going off even if they're not
depression related.

------
alirobe
Clickbait headline. Not article refers drugs which may have some correlative
relationship with depression (e.g. side effects may include), not drugs
associated with treatment of depression.

~~~
pwinnski
I also mis-read the headline, but that doesn't make the headline incorrect.

~~~
alirobe
Not incorrect, just clickbait.

~~~
sctb
I'm not so convinced; “linked to” is absolutely bog-standard for correlation.
The interesting thing is how much more we're primed to read it the other way
even with relatively unambiguous language.

------
vpribish
fix the goddamn headline

------
htor
how about: people are already depressed and having sketchy, addictive drugs
pushed on them by a large profit-driven medical industry will not fix the real
issue?

~~~
perl4ever
The headline doesn't seem to be about antidepressants.

------
mkirklions
They didnt include caffeine? I've read that caffeine is one of the best drugs
for reducing depression.

Note: I have a love/hate relationship with caffeine.

~~~
Retric
This is just "prescription drugs" which excludes caffeine.

------
SurrealSoul
This is a curious issue, clearly this is a problem. Having 1/3 of your
population depressed is IMO near a crises. However, how would a government or
a body of people act to fix this? Aiding people with tax breaks may not even
be touching the issue due to the nature of depression.

What can a governing people do to make it's people not miserable except for
handing out happy pills?

~~~
pwinnski
Reading the article reveals that you have fundamentally misunderstood the
issue here. The first paragraph of the article states:

> More than a third of American adults are taking prescription drugs,
> including hormones for contraception, blood pressure medications and
> medicines for heartburn, that carry a potential risk of depression,
> according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical
> Association.

Not on "happy pills," but on medicines that may lead to depression as a side
effect.

