Current Treatment Practices For Depression

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Depression has become increasingly commonplace in the United States over the past decade. Psychotherapy used to be the common treatment for depression, but recently anti-depressant medication has been taking over psychotherapy as depression's most prominent treatment. Sadly, this shift is not being made because it is the more effective approach, but because of aggressive marketing by pharmaceutical companies. Furthermore Psychiatrists are selling out to the drug companies instead of acting in their patients' best interests. Because of this, patients diagnosed with depression are being lulled into a dependency on medication for good moods.

Depression is the most common mental disorder in the United States. In fact, it is diagnosed so frequently that it has been dubbed the "common cold of psychopathology" by psychologists (Gerrig, 487). In response to this growing problem, guidelines have been established for the treatment of depression. According to the American Psychiatric Association (APA), most patients are best treated by a combination of anti-depressant medication and psychotherapy (Beutlar, 21). However, despite this guideline, an increasing number of depressed patients are being put exclusively on a regiment of anti-depressant medication by psychiatrists (Stafford, 2). So, the question before us is "Why would psychiatrists do this?". It can't be because the use of medication is effective on its own. Studies, such as Karl E. Miller's, have shown that the use of anti-depressant medication alone is no more effective in the treatment of depression than therapy. In fact, according to psychologist ToniAnn Serpe (MA),

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a treatment regimen comprised exclusively of medication can be even worse because "Medication does not help patients learn the skills to deal with their depressive feelings. Many become dependent

on the medication to feel good." This is especially important because, even for depression patients who report improvement "relapse rates may be from 60 percent to 80 percent during the two years following treatment termination" (Beutler, 312). Obviously, a relapse would be harder for someone who hasn't learned the skills for dealing with depressive feelings to handle. Given all this information, there must be a reason for psychiatrists to be prescribing medication as an exclusive treatment to depression besides the benefit of their patients.

One important reason is that many psychiatrists are being paid by the drug companies that manufacture anti-depressants to sell their products. Even ToniAnn Serpe, a psychotherapist who refers her patients to psychiatrists frequently, admits that "Psychiatrists do receive kickbacks to prescribe anti-depressant medication". These kick backs can certainly be quite substantial. One psychiatrist, Martin Keller, was given $556,000 by drug companies in exchange for moving their products last year (Kirkpatrick, 4); and this is not an isolated case. According to an article in New York Magazine written by David D. Kirkpatrick, the drug companies paid over $9 billion to market drugs to 68,000 physicians last year. This figure breaks down to roughly $12,000 a physician. Anyone can see that this is a rather substantial amount of money, and that it could easily influence the decisions of psychiatrists to write prescriptions. This is

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especially frightening considering that studies have shown that physicians read little of the scientific literature associated with the drugs they're prescribing (Valenstein, 166). Thus it is clear that the money that drug companies give to psychiatrists plays a part in their decision to prescribe medication.

Suffers of depression also don't raise any objections about the nature of their treatment. This is because pharmaceutical companies have led them by the hand to believe that drugs are the answer to depression. They are able to do this through advertising with very ambiguous messages which, as is set forth in the article "Ambiguity, processing strategy, and advertising-evidence interactions ", is very effective. One very good example of such advertising is the Zoloft commercial. In it, the narrator says "You know when you are not feeling like yourself. You're tired all the time. You may feel sad, hopeless and lose interest in things you once loved." Now these are feelings that I would venture to say that everyone has felt, so everyone who is watching is saying to themselves "wow, that sounds like me". Now the commercial tells all these people exactly what is wrong with them: "These are some symptoms of depression." Finally, the cure is offered: "depression maybe related to an imbalance of naturally occurring chemicals between nerve cells in the brain. Zoloft a prescription medicine works to correct this imbalance." So now everyone watching the commercial says to themselves "It's not my fault that I feel bad, and I can feel better so easily. I want that medication." So everyone goes to their psychiatrist and asks for medication for their depression (Valenstein, 174). Of course