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Use of Psychotropic Drugs: Between the Medicalization and Rationality

  • Chapter
Psychiatry and Neuroscience Update

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.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National University of San Luis, San Luis, Argentina

    Alicia del Carmen Panini, Marisa Hilda Garraza, Mauricio Roberto Teves, Emiliano Giraudo & Claudia Patricia Calderón

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  1. Alicia del Carmen Panini
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  2. Marisa Hilda Garraza
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  3. Mauricio Roberto Teves
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  4. Emiliano Giraudo
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  5. Claudia Patricia Calderón
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alicia del Carmen Panini .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Guaymallen Mendoza, Argentina

    Pascual Ángel Gargiulo

  2. Member of the Council of the Institute of Neurobiology (Buenos Aires); Member of the Board of Certification, National Academy of Medicine (Argentina), Psychiatrist by University Complutense of Madrid and University of Buenos Aires; Former Director of National Institute of Mental Health (Argentina), Cuyo, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Humberto Luis Mesones Arroyo

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del Carmen Panini, A., Garraza, M.H., Teves, M.R., Giraudo, E., Calderón, C.P. (2015). Use of Psychotropic Drugs: Between the Medicalization and Rationality. In: Gargiulo, P., Arroyo, H. (eds) Psychiatry and Neuroscience Update. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17103-6_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17103-6_15

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-17102-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-17103-6

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