WHO DOESN’T NEED MEDS NOW? –
July 10, 2022 – Their pediatrician recommended she come off the Adderall to determine whether the Paxil worked. While she was off the Adderall, her grades slipped. She recently started taking it again. She said the main downside of Adderall came at meal times. “Last year, when I was on it,” she said, “I couldn’t eat anything, so my sister would make me smoothies so I didn’t have to chew.”
“I just felt too productive to eat,” she added. “I had no appetite, instead, my brain was like, ‘You have to do everything right now.’ My body was hungry, but my mind was not.”
These rising medication numbers aren’t necessarily caused only by a worsening of mental health in this country (although we know that rates of anxiety and depression have increased). Part of the uptick could be explained by the fact that, stuck at home, people finally had time to seek out the health care they had been delaying. But patients seeking help are doing so against a backdrop of isolation, restriction, uncertainty and grief.
