ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Dr. Ronald Dworkin tells the story of a woman who didn't like the way her husband was handling the family finances. She wanted to start keeping the books herself but didn't want to insult her husband.

The doctor suggested she try an antidepressant to make herself feel better.

She got the antidepressant, and she did feel better, said Dr. Dworkin, a Maryland anesthesiologist and senior fellow at Washington's Hudson Institute, who told the story in his book "Artificial Unhappiness: The Dark Side of the New Happy Class." But in the meantime, Dworkin says, the woman's husband led the family into financial ruin.

"Doctors are now medicating unhappiness," said Dworkin. "Too many people take drugs when they really need to be making changes in their lives."

For Dworkin, the proof is in the statistics. According to a government study, antidepressants have become the most commonly prescribed drugs in the United States. They're prescribed more than drugs to treat high blood pressure, high cholesterol, asthma, or headaches. CNN's Elizabeth Cohen discusses the CDC study on antidepressants »

In its study, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked at 2.4 billion drugs prescribed in visits to doctors and hospitals in 2005. Of those, 118 million were for antidepressants.

High blood pressure drugs were the next most-common with 113 million prescriptions.

The use of antidepressants and other psychotropic drugs -- those that affect brain chemistry -- has skyrocketed over the last decade.

Adult use of antidepressants almost tripled between the periods 1988-1994 and 1999-2000.

Between 1995 and 2002, the most recent year for which statistics are available, the use of these drugs rose 48 percent, the CDC reported.

Many psychiatrists see this statistic as good news -- a sign that finally Americans feel comfortable asking for help with psychiatric problems.

"Depression is a major public health issue," said Dr. Kelly Posner, an assistant professor at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. "The fact that people are getting the treatments they need is encouraging."

She added that 25 percent of adults will have a major depressive episode sometime in their life, as will 8 percent of adolescents. "Those are remarkably high numbers," Posner said.

While Posner says genuine depression is driving the prescription numbers, Dr. Robert Goodman, an internist in New York City, says the real force behind skyrocketing antidepressant prescription rates is pharmaceutical marketing to doctors and to consumers. "You put those two together and you get a lot of prescriptions for antidepressants," he said.

He questions whether all those prescriptions are necessary. "It's hard to believe that number of people are depressed, or that antidepressants are the answer," he said.

Goodman is the founder of a group called "No Free Lunch," a group that encourages doctors to reject gifts from pharmaceutical companies. He added that patients sometimes see ads for antidepressants on television and ask doctors for the drugs -- and that studies show these requests work.

In a study published two years ago in the Journal of the American Medical Association, actors pretending to be patients went to doctors in the San Francisco area and said they were depressed.

The "patients" who asked for an antidepressant were significantly more likely to get a prescription for one than patients who didn't ask for an antidepressant.

But Posner's concern is about under-prescribing, not over-prescribing.

"Fifty percent of African-Americans who have depression don't seek treatment for it," she said. "Not enough people are getting the treatment they need."

CDC: Antidepressants most prescribed drugs in U.S. - CNN.com

why do people always focus on the symptoms rather than the cause of the problem?

I think the real important question is why are so many people depressed?

well it's usually easier that way?

exactly. It's just easier to ignore the dirt and let it rot until it festers to the point where you can't function.

Humanity is reaching that point.

when i seemahshrink imma tear them a new asshole

and then ask them to kindlydo the samein return


98%of peopledont have the inborn chemical imbalance"
and learned socialization as is during the formative years is probabaly more destructive wiring wise than we care toadmit
life sucks
its not a disorder to recognise that

and psychologists and shrinks are douchebags who never even examine their own lives and live for projection


but foprgive them
foor they know not what they do

.....because most people are, frankly, stupid. They are somehow incapable with dealing with life. Most people have an inability to roll with the punches of life. Listen to daily conversations around you, i would bet that 75% is just idiotic complaints about insignificant trivialities.

the supposed "depression" is the easiest diagnosis that one can render. Eventually, all these idiots that are on prozac or paxil or zoloft or lithium or whatever fucking drug........they "become" depressed because there isn't enough of the drug in their blood.... much like people who take advil all the time because they have a "headache"....the body becomes used to the introduction of that drug everytime the stimulus of "headache" is present....so that eventually one has a headache only because there is not enough advil in the blood stream. Simply. Asinine.

well said man, all those bastards should be shot.

Alot of these people who seek anti-depressants do so for the convenience of an easy lift, rather than because they consider themselves as actually suffering from depression. When such a seemingly straightforward solution is presented to them, they're inclined to take it, irrespective of how much or little they require it. It all relates to perfectionism in the human disposition. luftwaffe presents a very valid and often overlooked point about the development of dependency. People are beginning to lose their sense of independence and self-sufficiency, and the American economy needs to invest more in self-help schemes, rather than promoting the accessibility of drugs. People cannot place their faith in antidepressants such that a child cannot be spoon-fed into adulthood.

it can't always be so easy to figure out the "problem" though, right?

or it can be very easy to figure out the problem but impossible to solve it.

__________________

well depression is just another medical condition, like high blood pressure..if ya got it go get treatment. And no psychologist would say that anti depressants are the cure but they are a BIG part of the treatment...with therapy.