No More Stress Monthly
November, 2004
The No More Stress Monthly is a newsletter that provides featured articles on depression prevention, proper anxiety treatment techniques, reviews of natural depression treatments, interviews with psychologists, and information on both adult depression and teen depression, stress, and anxiety. The No More Stress Monthly is brought to you by Stress-Anxiety-Depression.org.
The Truth About Stress
article syndicated from Psych Drug Truth
Stress is defined by the dictionary as, "mental or physical tension or strain." Although this is a simple definition, it seems to have enormous ramifications, especially in this day and time. A search through the Internet on the word yields hundreds of stress-related sites which include therapies, books, tapes, self-help techniques, and more, all designed to help alleviate stress.
We all experience stress, and have different ways of dealing with it. Many use physical activities such as sports, athletics, or exercise. Others have other recreational activities such as going out to movies, to the theater, concerts, or other forms of entertainment. The normal stresses of life are usually dealt with these ways.
Stress can grow greater, though, through life-altering events such as disasters, deaths of loved ones, prolonged unemployment, bad job conditions, hostility, and any of a variety of other factors. When this happens, people often seek help. Unfortunately, that help can lead to betrayal when it comes to medication "designed" to handle stress.
Types of Stress
The number and types of stress seem as numerous as the events of life that can cause it. The primary areas focused on by those providing "treatment", however, are general long-term stress, post-traumatic stress, and postpartum stress. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association has stress and its varieties classified under "anxiety disorders" -- as do drug companies that seek to provide treatment for them.
Supposed Causes
The DSM, which is the bible for these types of disorders, lists no physical causes for stress in all the 51 detailed pages devoted to anxiety disorders, which includes the major varieties of stress. This is important to note, because the pharmaceutical companies are enthusiastically marketing numerous drugs to "treat" several varieties of stress and insist that these drugs will do the trick.
Interestingly, they are the same exact drugs as used for the treatment of depression, and the drug companies have the same weak arguments for the causes of depression and panic disorders as they do for stress. That is, phrases such as, "It is believed..." and "scientists believe that..." and "it my be that..." fill their text under causes of these disorders, and the causes are purported to be the exact same causes as those of depression -- that is, certain neurotransmitters (chemicals in the nervous system that assist nerve impulses to travel from one nerve to the next) are deficient in people with these disorders.
Here is the important piece of information to remember whenever you run across this "chemical imbalance in the brain" argument: It has never been clinically proven that stress, anxiety, panic or for that matter depression, has any cause in neurotransmitters. Never. And believe it or not, there is not a doctor in the world that will disagree with that statement. And the literature accompanying the drugs which are prescribed for these "disorders" will always state that the manufacturers don't know what causes these disorders, but "it is believed" that they are caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, and "it is believed" that these drugs treat the disorder by correcting this imbalance.
History
Interestingly, a study of the history of research into stress reveals nothing about chemical imbalances. It does go into various causes of stress both internal and external, the fact that stress can cause illness, and a plethora of non-drug ways and means to cope with stress. It is only in the last fifteen years or so that the theory of the cause of depression has spilled over into stress and related disorders -- and this is likely due to the search for new markets for lucrative antidepressant drugs.
But since stress disorders are now being "linked" to neurotransmitters, it is worth the time to look at the research from which neurotransmitters were linked to depression, since that's where the "chemical imbalance in the brain" theory began.
In 1973, two scientists named Candice Pert and S. H. Snyder made a discovery, published in Science magazine, that there were definite, specific nerve receptacles for opiate drugs (opiate drugs, such as opium and marijuana, have a tranquilizing, euphoric effect). It was immediately wondered why the body would have such receptacles -- does the body naturally expect opiate drugs? A few years later, the answer was found: It was discovered that the body had its own opiate chemicals -- the very neurotransmitters later targeted by anti-depressant drugs.
The way that a neurotransmitter chemical operates normally is, it is passed along from one nerve to another. A bit of it is sent out at a time from one nerve to the next. After a bit is sent out and received by the next nerve, any of the neurotransmitter remaining between the nerves is taken back by the first nerve, a process called reuptake. The question was then posed that, if levels of these "opiate" neurotransmitters were elevated, wouldn't it give the person a sense of well-being? It was also theorized that depressed people might not have enough of these chemicals operating in their system, hence the depression. It was also realized that the level of specific neurotransmitters could be raised by inhibiting the reuptake process, causing the neurotransmitter to continue in a steady stream instead of intermittently.
That was in the late nineteen-seventies and early nineteen-eighties, and that's where the whole story takes a very nasty turn. For if the investigators had proceeded as they should have, with scientific methods and principals, the following would have happened:
a) The theory that the cause of depression lay in neurotransmitters or the lack of them would have been proven or disproved.
b) If the theory were proven, then drugs which worked positively to treat depression would have been developed, or,
c) If the theory were disproved, then no drugs would have been developed, and research would have continued looking for other causes.
Instead, what happened was that some money-minded individuals realized what might happen if someone announced a "cure for depression". They convinced other like-minded individuals. And there the science stopped, and the profits and lies began.
The theory that certain neurotransmitters are responsible for depression remains a theory to this day -- completely unproven. In fact, if you check the literature for any antidepressant drug, it will say that a) the true cause of depression is unknown, but is believed to be caused by the lack of certain neurotransmitters, and b) the exact action of their drug is unknown. You will find this in each and every case, drug for drug. In that the exact same drugs are being recommended for stress, you'll find the exact same types of wordings are being applied to stress medications.
What Should You Do?
If you have already started on a course of medication for stress, we urge you to first read for yourself the full list of side effects for the drug you are taking. You can proceed to our front page to find the drug you are taking, and follow the links to its side effects.
We then urge you to consult your physician and talk about discontinuing the drug. This can be far easier said than done, however, because many of these drugs are addictive and have withdrawal symptoms. Once you are off the drug, you will probably find you feel far better than you did while you were on it. That's saying something for a drug that's supposed to treat stress.
If you have not started on a course of medication for your stress, we urge you not to do so. Please re-read the above information if need be, but please do not become another victim of a well-financed scam aimed at cashing in on your troubles.
Conclusion
We are not seeking here to give you a treatment for stress, but simply to show you that the drugs being prescribed are most emphatically not treatments, and can cause far more harm than good.
In seeking a solution to stress, we only urge you to find one that does not use any kind of psychiatric medication.