Letters to the Editor
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I think there are certainly valid points made in this article, but I still take exception to couple of things.
First: the statement that
"...at the same time the definition of treatable depression was watered down -- renamed as social anxiety disorder, panic disorder and, my personal favorite, generalized anxiety disorder -- to include a seemingly endless demographic of adults and children" seems to be a trifle unfair, insofar as it suggests that these somehow aren't real or are less real or just 'watered down forms of depression'. As one with a couple of medical conditions--among them panic disorder and agoraphobia--that require treatments with medications, I can say with certainty that it is not only 'real,' it is absolutely not clinical depression that has been as it were jerrymandered to include a larger group of people.
Second, broadly equating treatment with any kind of medication, be they (as other writers have pointed out)antidepressants, anxiolytics, ritalin/adderall-type medications or painkillers causes other kinds of problems. Consider the latter--in addition to my agoraphobia, I am also a sufferer of a disease which will very likely cause me to be in pain for the rest of my life. The kinds of identifications that Mr. Amsden makes in this article are the same ones used by the DEA. That is, the DEA's obsession with controlling the abuse of painkillers has led to a state of affairs where a practitioner can in good conscience prescribe Zoloft as "pain medicine" or where even a doctor in a pain clinic will refuse to treat a legitimate condition. I've heard reports of dental patients told that they can't have anything following a painful extraction or other surgical procedure because "The DEA doesn't think that Vicodin [for example] is an appropriate treatment for this." Patients end up being essentially stuck in pain.
This is off-topic, but the point is, if this type of thinking were eventually expanded to include antidepressants, benzodiazepines and Ritalin, ever larger numbers of people with valid conditions could end up without necessary (and again, appropriate) treatment. It is probably true that these drugs are overprescribed/overused in the United States, but to assume that using them is basically the same as having a few drinks or what have you will not remedy any situation, be it undertreatment or overuse.