I have come across this very interesting article and it spoke about our generation being overpopulated with people taking medication for literally everything. I have to agree that we are a generation that can not deal with the simplest of things and situations. We tend to always want to find the easy way out. Looking for a bandaid or a quick fix to make everything okay. This is very scary to me because it has started with the adults and is progressing to children as young as a couple of months old.
People take medicine for depression, sleep disorders, and attention deficit disorder. Although there are people who truly do suffer immensely from these disorders and cant help it but take medication for it, but when the majority of the population thinks they have these disorders; thats where the problem starts. The article said that drug companies have pushed the selling of drugs through ads and commercials and have influenced people to believe they have some sort of disorder and thats how they sell their drugs.
My opinion on this topic is that we live in a country where we want to do everything and accomplish so much at one time that we will medicate ourselves just to get through the day. It has gotten so bad that we give medication to our hyper-active children to calm them down so that we dont have to deal with them while trying to accomplish our own personal tasks either at home or at work. Whatever happened to kids just being kids? Maybe these kids are over active because they seek attention from their parents. Instead of medicating these children and putting a medical label on them, why not try talking and spending time with them and find out the true problem. It might not be a disorder afterall.
My point in all of this is that we need to take time for ourselves and relax because Rome wasnt built in a day and we need to face that. For ourselves, our children, and future generations, we need to stop this over medication of society now because if we dont, we will become a country full of robots. We will keep taking medicine for every little thing we dont like about ourselves or cant deal with and we will be controlled by these pills and drugs. We will become a generation full of drug addicts.
Completely agree with you. When I first moved to the U.S I realized exactly what you mentioned about people wanting to accomplish so many things at once. I remember saying I’d be the exception but long before I knew it I was part of the system. I found myself over thinking, over reacting, overly tired and eventually unable to sleep, so I medicated myself 5 hr energy to keep me going during the day and Tylenol PM at night. One day I realized this was just ridiculous and I had to re-train my body… overall a terrible experience. That being said, I couldn’t imagine being a kid under meds!
As you said Rome wasn’t built in a day and as discussed in class it’s important to understand that we have the power to change anything we want about ourselves if we take the time to. The problem is of course TIME. We live in a world where time is synonym for money and unfortunately money’s the driving force of our society.
Your article touched on it briefly, but the biggest problem with this system of “over diagnosis” lays with children. When kids are given prescriptions from a young age, they don’t know how to function without drugs. Even if we overlook the addictiveness of the drugs themselves, a child who has always functioned with drugs is likely to be dependent on them. It is likely that these kids have never made a conscious decision about whether or not they wanted/needed these drugs.
If we look at adults who are heavily dependent on drugs, we must trust in their decision to swallow the pill. Unfortunately, many people simply trust in the decision making of their doctors, which, may not be in their best interests. The fact is, drugs are an extremely easy fix. The usage of prescription drugs will not change until the side effect and long terms show greater risks than the rewards, or the rewards are decided as unnecessary.
On the other hand, who’s to say that this heavy usage of prescriptions is a bad thing? Maybe we’re moving toward a future where everyone takes a certain pill which transforms their personality into something they desire. Honestly, if everyone could control their personality or feelings with a pill, the world might be a more pleasant place to live.
I think it’s hard to make a proper decision about many prescription drugs when the long term effects are simply unknown. Many prescriptions have not been in to market long enough to truly understand them. If we overlook this idea, it’s easy to advocate acceptance of these drugs, but is this a well-informed decision?
Suspects or criminals w\ mental illnesses make up a large percentage of offenders incarcerated by our criminal justice system. Some are arguably insane, with depression or psychoses that put them at risk of suicide or harming themselves with several sharp objects in order to escape the judgement. Others are basically in touch with reality, but with personality and behavioral disorders that caused the crimes that landed them in jail. Whatever the level of their condition, such individuals can be categorized or comprehended as individuals with medical problems. Their medical problem is their minds, punishable by legal sanctions including imprisonment. If the legal system would considerate the funds and time to this “special” patients, we would be able to understand the illnesses they encounter during their crimes, comprehending the diagnosis and coming up with medication or vindication for these diseases a criminal mind encounters.
I do agree that this world has become depended on medication. We think pills are the answer to everything and that they can heal anything. I mean doctors don’t even want to think anymore, just want to prescribe some pills so they can get paid. In result all of this is created because of money. It is all about business in the end.
Moms and dads bring their little kids to the doctors thinking they have some disorder, the doctor even knowing that this might not be something all that serious, in most cases will prescribe the pill to the kid and tell the parents that their son or daughter has some disorder. That is how America, in general, is all on pills. This world in general revolves around money….money makes the world go around.
The only ways to survive this type of environment is just to be smarter and more cunning that everybody else. Living your life and obeying everything that one says will get you eating in this type of place. Im probably going off topic, but it all comes back to the whole situation with our little kids on medication. The whole reason is because the parents aren’t educated enough to not give their little 4 year old kid pills that will eat away at his liver and brain and make him or her even more sick in the long run. I would truly never give my little kid any pills unless I’m certain that this is the only and only way he can be treated.