Study: Doctors medicated life problems

The study showed a contradiction between patients and doctors in the interpretation of the symptoms of mental illness.

- What the patient interpreted as reduced well-being or suffering due to social factors such as unemployment or grief was immediately interpreted by most doctors as a medical condition that would be treated with drugs, says Andreas Vilhelmsson

- There was a lack of interest in the patient's own history and understanding of why they were feeling bad.

Several patients in the study testified that they wanted to see a psychologist, but that few were acquitted.

- It emerged that doctors immediately insisted on antidepressants that they termed would help with the patient's "chemical imbalance" in the brain and that it was something you would need to go on for the rest of your life. Much like insulin.

Andreas Vilhelmsson believes that the doctors medicated normal life problems.

"Some patients also reported that they were pressured by their doctors to accept antidepressants in order to stay or keep their sick leave," says Andreas Vilhelmsson.

Today, one million Swedes eat anti-depressant drugs. This is something that worries Andreas Vilhelmsson. He believes that the drugs do not solve the basic problems that many people have in terms of unemployment and other social causes.

- Medicines cost and to this comes all the side effects and for some severe withdrawal symptoms. It is unnecessarily burdened with health care if non-medical causes are being medicated.

- We also don't know what it will take in the long run to take these drugs. Several patients in studies testify to a blurring effect, ie they do not feel really present with family and friends. That what might protect them when the mental health problems are aggravating also takes the hint of being present in their lives with others.