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RANDOM TOUGHTS …DEPRESSION: The 9-question survey many doctors use to diagnose depression was actually created by an antidepressant manufacturer

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The most dangerous thing any adult can do today
is walk into a psychiatrist’s office —Dr Peter Breggin,
American psychiatrist
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Well, blow me down. Who'da thunk it?​

Altho someone should have, what with the explosion of prescriptions for anti-d's starting in the early nineties, and like a snowball rolling downhill, gathering adherents and momentum as it careened recklessly along.


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Prozac opened the floodgates, and Drs, psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists, dermatologists, naturopaths with a prescribing partner, dentists, opthalmologists, you name it, anyone with a prescription pad and the legal right to use it just poured thru, in a huge, roiling, constantly cresting wave, until now, SSRIs remain THE MOST prescribed psychiatric medication in the US.​


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Impacting an estimated 300 million-plus people, ​
depression is the most common mental disorder, generally affecting women more often than men, but the scales seem to be rebalancing now and the gender difference is getting smaller and smaller.

Antidepressants are the most prescribed psych med, followed closely by anti-anxiety medications like Xanax and Ativan or any other benzo that can be justified, legally speaking, followed by mood stabilizers. Anti-psychotics bring up the rear, altho with impressive numbers.


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For a lucky few, these drugs are miraculous life-savers., allowing them to live something closer to normal lives, and to escape the ripping, rending, tearing clutches of the horrors of what ails ‘em.



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But for the rest of twenty-four percent (24% !!!) of Americans who are currently taking some form of psychiatric medication (which actually explains a lot ) the story can be waaaaaaay darker and more painful.….and can last a very, very, looooooong time. Sometimes for the rest of their lives. And those lives can be shortened dramatically by suicide or attempted suicide, which is a not entirely infrequent result ….

I often wondered when the naturally occurring human responses to catastrophe, calamity, extended pain and illness, isolation, and the many and various slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, like depression, suddenly became a mental illness. As tho any other response to those circumstances wouldn’t have been bizarre, and in truth, truly insane.

Now I know.


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​
Here are the 9 questions, developed by the marketer who first dreamed up the idea for what later became the PHQ-9 — the quick tool that ultimately made many primary care doctors more comfortable prescribing antidepressants from exam rooms worldwide — was a "marketing man" working for Pfizer.

Howard Kroplick convinced the company to invest in the pricey research required to develop the now-ubiquitous questionnaire. The rise of questionnaires like the PHQ-9 has led to more anti-depressant prescriptions than any BigPharma company could possibly have dreamed of prior to its creation.

Whether for better or for worse, well ….. that’s an open question …



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SOOOOO …… HERE’S THE QUESTIONNAIRE DEVELOPED TO DETERMINE THE QUALITY OF YOUR FUTURE, AND MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU ….GOOD LUCK ….
  1. Little interest or pleasure in doing things
  2. Feeling down depressed and hopeless
  3. Trouble falling or staying asleep, or sleeping too much
  4. Feeling tired or having little energy
  5. Poor appetite or overeating
  6. Feeling bad about yourself or that you’re a failure or have let your family down
  7. Trouble concentrating on things like reading a newspaper or watching TV ....
  8. Moving or speaking so slowly that other people have noticed. Or the opposite, being so fidgety or restless that you’ve been moving around a lot more than usual...
  9. Thoughts that you would be better off dead, or of hurting yourself.
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YippeeKi YOW !!
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