Over-prescribed, over-medicated and addicted. That’s the sobering report from RT.com, and it’s not about Generation X or Y (though they share in the addiction) it’s about older Americans.
Number of US seniors on multiple psychotropic drugs doubles over decade
The number of retirement-age Americans being prescribed multiple psychiatric drugs without a recorded mental health diagnosis has increased, despite government warnings against over-prescribing such medications, a new study has found.
Between 2004 and 2013, the number of older Americans taking three or more psychiatric medicines ‒ known as “polypharmacy” ‒ doubled from 0.6 percent of doctor visits to 1.4 percent, even though half of those patients had not been diagnosed with a mental health disorder, the study published Monday in the medical journal JAMA Internal Medicine revealed.
Worrisome, indeed. And to be expected from the pill pushing pharmaceutical industry that takes in just a bit of cash.
From The Motley Fool
1. $1.05 trillion
That’s the total revenue of the global pharmaceutical market. To put that number in perspective, it’s roughly one-quarter of what the U.S. federal government will spend in 2016.2. $515 billion
Of the $1.05 trillion revenue for the global pharmaceutical market, nearly half of it — roughly $515 billion — comes from the U.S. and Canada. However, the two countries make up only around 7% of the total world population.
And it’s not just the older generation who are slammin’ down the chemicals. Nearly 60 percent of Americans — the highest ever — are taking prescription drugs. (Washington Post).
But given the media-induced hysteria over politics, the calamity-of-the-hour we’re forced fed; along with the sordid news and entertainment offerings, and the lack of anything of substance being offered in most schools and colleges, none of this is surprising. If one has only been taught (brainwashed) to believe that the latest chemical wonder is all that one needs to cure the pain (whether emotional or physical) and then, of course, another pill the cure the side effect of the first pill taken, then another pill to cure the side effect of the 2nd pill taken (well, you get the picture) then how would one know to do otherwise.
Rather than investigate natural alternatives, you know, the stuff Mother Earth gives us to treat about any ailment with minimal expense, especially if you grow the plant yourself – we’ve been led to believe that a visit to the doctor’s office to remedy whatever might be turning our stomach is the cure-all. The doctor abides our wishes, sending us along with a script for the chemical wonder just for us. It’s then to the pharmacy, then home, turning on the television, sending the 100th text of the day to advise that you’re watching the latest bit of nonsense offered up on the tube and then on to bed, with rarely a thought of what you’ve just introduced to your body. Rather than holistic and steady nutrition, we’ve been taught to believe that a pill will cure the ill.
Granted, there are serious ailments/diseases that chemicals can treat, not cure, but treat. My father, suffering from advanced Parkinson’s is on a battery of chemicals that I can’t pronounce. They have kept him alive, so far. The side effects from the drugs are horrendous. His quality of life, if one can even remotely consider it “quality”, is deplorable.
How we have gotten to the point where chemicals are considered the “go to” method for any ailment, pain and disease is explored in the video documentary below.
There was once a time when everyday people used natural folk remedies to minimize pain and cope with disease, and yet today thousands of young children are being prescribed legal methamphetamines to treat “behavioral problems.” How did we fall so far from where we began, and is it possible to ever return? Understanding how we got here in the first place is an important first step, and this is a big part of what Toddlers on Amphetamine: History of Big Pharma and the Major Players aims to achieve.
The film “documents the full history of allopathic medicine, the hidden history of what we call ‘big pharma,’ and how the world generally came to be the way it is today,” the film’s producers explain. “It examines the history of chemicals, poison in particular, disease, power, and psychopathy.”Toddlers on Amphetamine: History of Big Pharma and the Major Players.
Toddlers on Amphetamine: History of Big Pharma and the Major Players
(Full Documentary) – Era of Wisdom
Photo credit (front page): By ParentingPatch (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
Dispatches from the Asylum 