Use of psychotropic drugs: Between the medicalization and rationality

Abstract

The way in which we perceive mental illness has changed over time. Currently, problems adjusting to certain situations of everyday life, such as stress, anxiety, insomnia, and depression have become diseases that must be treated with medication, regardless that, in most cases, these problems could be solved with simple changes in lifestyle. Psychotropic drugs are not always prescribed for true patients, but for patients with other types of suffering, being useless drugs, or acting as placebos in the most cases. The banal, excessive, and abusive use of them is known as medicalization of mental health, caused mainly by the aggressive promotion carried out for the pharmaceutical industry by using different strategies. Not only do the psychoactive drugs and the health professionals influence this process, since by the current globalization of health, the patients have turned into true consumers of all types of health services. The improper use of this group of drugs which leads to significant adverse reactions, the changes in perception of the processes of health and disease, and the inclusion of highly vulnerable groups as targets of medicalization, are truly alarming. Therefore, our objective is to describe some aspects of this complex problem and to outline some proposals to try to change it.