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Publication: Emory Wheel, , Emory University, Atlanta, GA
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While most college students might not be familiar with the brand names of cancer treatment drugs, they are no stranger to names like Zoloft and Prozac. Polypharmacy, the act of taking multiple medications at once, is also nothing new on college campuses; we throw around medication like a rag doll ripped to shreds by a hyperactive puppy.
But with the rise in ads for antidepressant pills on social media, the normalization of medication and the “Antidepressants” section in the New York Times, the mental health crisis demands our attention more than ever. While it’s important to increase our comfort with antidepressants, we still must wonder if as a society, we are overprescribing and under therapizing. My argument isn’t against the usage of medication. I’m not a doctor and I can’t make that judgment – professionally or morally. Instead, I find it prudent to acknowledge that by decreasing stigmatization of prescribing antidepressants, we increase our reliance on these drugs with blind beliefs in its efficacy, despite not enough solid research and more tests necessary to back it up.
In 2020, the National Alliance on Mental Illness surveyed that 21% of U.S. adults experienced mental illness and 16.5% of them had taken medication to curb their symptoms. But as the rates of people experiencing mental health issues soar, so do the number of psychiatric drugs a teenager might have in their system at any given time. In severe cases, doctors have been known to dole out more than 10 medications at once.
While studies are not objectively conclusive, some researchers from the University College London have claimed the effect of antidepressants and other mental health-aiding medication has no more significant benefits than that of the placebo. The long-term effects of polypharmacy in adults as well as the quality of life post-medication have not...