A growing number of teens and young adults are overdosing on mental health drugs, according to a study published March 2, 2022 in the journal Pediatrics.
Many of the overdoses are due to abuse of prescribed psychiatric drugs such as benzodiazepines and psychostimulants.
Benzos, or BZDs, include anti-anxiety drugs such as Xanax; psychostimulants include drugs such as Ritalin, Adderall, and Concerta.
Between 2016 and 2018, results show 29 percent of the youths who overdosed on BZDs received a written prescription within one month of their overdose. One in four youths overdosing on mental health stimulants received a doctor’s prescription a month before the incident. The study found that young adults who intentionally overdosed on BZDs and stimulants were more likely to have a recent prescription than those who suffered an accidental overdose.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 4,777 U.S. youths died of a drug overdose in 2019. BZD use accounted to 727 of these overdoses and 902 involved psychostimulants.
We hear renewed cries from the psychiatric industry for more funds and more screenings. Unfortunately, psychiatric screenings for potential suicide or self-harm are a total fraud.
Risk assessments, screenings, school mental health programs and more funding are often presented as solutions to suicide, and since the onset of the Covid pandemic calls for more screenings and funding are louder than ever. Yet these so-called solutions are actually contributing to the problem by masking truly effective solutions and proliferating the use of psychotropic drugs whose side effects include suicide and violence.
No one denies that people can have difficult problems in their lives, that at times they can be mentally unstable. Mental health care is therefore both valid and necessary. However, the emphasis must be on workable mental healing methods that improve and strengthen individuals and thereby society by restoring people to personal strength, ability, competence, confidence, stability, responsibility and spiritual well-being. Psychiatry is not workable.
