If there’s one thing that really scares me about my generation it’s our reliance on medication. Or maybe reliance is the wrong word. Maybe I mean using it as a substitute or a panacea. The older I get the more I become aware of how dependent we have become on products, pills and creams. To be clear, I’ve turned to Adderall, Zoloft, Benadryl, Motrin and more to deal with a variety of ills. I’m neither pharmaphobic nor a naturalist. But I look around at my friends and their kids, and everyone’s on something.
The scary questions that plague me at 4 am are these: is there more anxiety than when I was a kid? If so, why? Is there more autism, ADHD? Does using meds ultimately help or hinder? What will the next generation discover about these ills and our pill-pushing that we’ll wish we would have known?
I worry about some doctors diagnosing symptoms and not asking about causes. Treating symptoms and not causes. Why is this? If I present with a strange rash, a doctor will typically look at it, ask a few questions, and prescribe a cream to eradicate it. But I know that I get eczema when stressed. The eczema is not the problem. The stress is.
But who is asking me if I’m stressed? My doctor is not. And what would he or she do with that information anyway? Doctors can’t eliminate stress. So, is a pill to remove symptoms of undiagnosed stress truly helpful?
Are causes too hard to uncover? I believe we are still in our infancy with mental health. Autism, while the diagnosis certainly helps me obtain valuable services, is merely a way of saying that many people, for many different reasons, have a collection of sometimes-similar symptoms. Autistic symptoms – ranging from the non-verbal variety to Einstein-flavored Asperger’s – can arise from genetics, trauma during childbirth, or a hundred other unknowns. So autism is not so much a diagnosis as a description.
The anxiety associated with autism, then, is the child’s way of coping with the universe. Pills are important and pills can help, but are we asking the right questions? As a mother I’ve been terrified of scary symptoms. I’ve evolved from that mom who said “I’m not medicating my kid to behave” and quickly morphed to “Doc, should we raise the dosage?” Now I’m asking this: “Are we a generation that can’t function without pills?”
In my deepest heart I am terrified of CVS, of the pills we pump into ourselves and our kids every day. And I am also the first to pop an Advil for the merest whisper of a headache.
So are we the weakest generation, for being unable to tolerate pain without pills? Or the strongest, for admitting we need help?
Your eczema anecdote, about diagnosing causes vs. treating symptoms, calls to mind this saying: “Dermatology’s two rules: If it’s wet, dry it. And if it’s dry, wet it.”
I believe that there is more anxiety these days. Specifically, we believe more that things are in our control (success, achievement, recognition) and that makes us more anxious than a perspective that does not focus on our individual efforts but acknowledges that our successes are not ours alone but result from a lot of situational advantages and assistance from others. And luck. Our expectations of ourselves are higher, which translates into more anxiety.
I wonder about autism. Is there more now? Was there more of a range of types before, where some people were just “odd” or “withdrawn” or whatever? Same thing goes for many things that we consider disorders.
Pills, I’m so grateful for them. They have saved and improved many lives around me. I’m including psychotropic meds in this. I figure that life was always quite miserable for most people (and short, with more miserable, unmedicated deaths), so it is not a surprise that our lengthier, more complicated lives involve more pills.
Pills are worrying though, I will grant. Still, I’m much more worried about what screens and clicks and Instagram are doing to our children’s brains than pills.
Love this, Ruchi! Love that it comes from a non-bashing, relateable place, but still raises so many interesting and important points.
Honestly, a true, ideal real doctor WOULD and should ask for a whole picture, and outsource accordingly – i.e. recommend whatever emotional or nutritional treatment is needed to tackle the root problem, while *temporarily* aiding the symptom, just so that one can function. (though yes of course they cannot really eliminate stress completely).
Basically, a “balance” would be – take the meds, but not recurringly. And if it’s too recurring, it just rebounds itself and we end up in viscous cycles. There aren’t many “big picture” trustworthy practitioners out there, at least not that are accepted conventionally and/or readily known about. They definitely generally seem out to prescribe, to “band-aid”, not to otherwise figure out how to help heal – through diet (which doctors are not taught about at all), supplements, and other natural remedies. [Note, I’m referring here to conditions that are less chronic type and of the simpler, typical variety – i.e. strep and other type of infections, not conditions that are inborn or genetic etc]
For SOME cases, natural alternatives WILL work – but only with KNOWLEDGE, PATIENCE, and PERSISTENCE. And most people don’t have the energy for all of that; trial and error is too discouraging and time and energy are limited to expending on so many other stresses, because it is just too daunting to enter a whole new approach, a new risk, a new way of thinking. But there is a tremendous wealth of information out there for those who want to discover it. I spent years researching it and coming to conclusions of my own, as I implemented gradually. (though, granted, I have not been faced with more complex challenges such as ADD, autism, etc. again, just more mainstream issues). I would still not be averse to pill-popping *as needed* but I too worry very much about long-term usage.
As for SBW’s last comment – so true, but they go hand-in-hand, even according to the secular research! See https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/?utm_source=fbb.
I think it would be a total cop-out to say we are strong for admitting we need help. Past generations did not NEED as much help – the world was simpler, they were stronger, and less reliant, less about the “quick fix.”
For those interested, this is one (amongst many) good read on this topic:
https://www.amazon.com/Healing-New-Childhood-Epidemics-Groundbreaking/dp/0345494512/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1512634196&sr=8-1&keywords=healing+the+new+childhood+epidemics
Thanks for always bringing to light such interesting, informative, and practical topics, and giving your honesty and sincerity along with it! 🙂
It’s hard. I’m one of the few people I know who is not (currently) on any kind of daily medication but that doesn’t mean I feel happy all the time. It’s simply that I feel happy enough. However, I also have had periods of significant depression. I resisted anti-depression medication and tried to be strong but when I couldn’t function or go to work without crying, I used the drugs. Going off for a long stay in the country or hiding at home or going to Europe to cheer my spirits were not options. I have to work. If I can’t work, that is a crisis. Everyone has something they need to do (such as care for a household of 9 in your case) and if they can’t function in that role, it is a crisis. Drugs can help with a crisis.
I don’t know that people were happier in earlier generations. I only have my grandparents and parents generations to observe directly but there was not at lot of happiness there during the thick of life when they were working and raising children and trying to make ends meet, etc. That doesn’t mean they hated life but I do think their expectations were lower.
Most of the parents at my (non-Orthodox) Jewish day school are anxious about their kids. They want their kids to be popular, they want them to be super smart, they want them not to suffer. AT ALL. So if the kid is anxious, they want to remove that problem. If the kid is hyper, they want to remove the problem. They all know that their child has to compete in this school, the next school and the school after that and then they have to compete for a good job, they have to marry the right kind of person, they have to manage a household or continue to make a lot of money or whatever. They are seeking a life of achievement after achievement. That is the life they led and that their parents led and often their grandparents as well. These people did not become wealthy (or solidly upper middle class) by sitting around.
I really appreciate everything they have achieved and how driven they are but … it’s a lot of put on a 5 year old, 8 year old, 13 year old, 16 year old. Some of the kids are amazing and handle it with grace and apparent ease. But others just seem to be freaking out. They do not always have the inner resources to handle that level of stress. Some kids are better at playing basketball or drawing. What happens to a charedi boy who is really good at art and not so good at Talmud? Or an upper middle class secular Jewish kid who just doesn’t like school? A girl who hates babies? These things are not allowed. That’s stressful.
It’s hard to know when to push and when to just let the child be. There is literally no guidebook on that issue. We all want our kids to feel challenged and to rise to the challenges of life without feeling stressed out. All challenges create some stress but how much is too much? Who knows?
If you go to a doctor, they will give you pills. If you go to a Zen master, they will tell you to meditate. If you to the gym, they will tell you to exercise. If you go to a rabbi, they will tell you to pray. All of those things would probably help — we have the power to choose the medicine we want.
The most important thing we can do is to be present, to be loving, to be supportive. A kid who feels seen and loved is always going to do better, regardless of their brain chemistry or the rules of their particular tribe, than a kid who feels judged and alone.
Working on our own middot is a never ending, life long journey. A community full of loving people is a great gift and we can help create that community by working harder on ourselves. Most people cannot get into Harvard, most people cannot go to medical school, most people cannot finish a Ph.D, most people are not Ovadia Yosef (z”l). Some people will get sick, some people will be struck by unavoidable tragedy, some people have less money, more problems, and less support than others. But every single person can become more loving. Everyone can become more caring. Everyone can work harder on themselves.
As parents, we get to see how amazing human development is up close. The baby can’t crawl and then — it can! The baby can walk! The child can speak! She can brush her teeth! She did her homework! It’s really so incredible and such a daily miracle and yet also so common that it’s hard to stay amazed. But our kids are teaching us something that most of us forget by the time we’re 30 or so. Things are always changing. We can continue to change and grow. A child who sees a parent who is changing and growing will learn that whatever they are feeling now (stress, anxiety, pain, fear) will pass.
If we want our kids to believe that hope is real and that life gets better and that we can make the world a better place and that we are all emissaries from a loving G-d — we need to believe those things ourselves. Sometimes I feel that way and sometimes I don’t. What should we do when we don’t? That’s hard.
Thanks for writing this, SDK, it’s amazing.
Wow. SDK. Thank you.