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Depressed, moi? Why the French are driven to drugs
This is just too funny to EFL too much. Nearly one in four French people are on tranquillisers, antidepressants, antipsychotics or other mood-altering prescription drugs, according to an alarming report published yesterday. Funny, I could have sworn the figure was higher! It revealed that an average of 40% of men and women aged over 70 in France were routinely prescribed at least one of this class of dependence-creating drug, as well as some 4% of all children under nine. And about 90% in the Quai dâOrsay. "The French now consume between two and four times as many tranquillisers and anti-depressants as the British, Italians and Germans," one medical expert, Martine Perez, said in Le Figaro. "The problem is not new, but this underlines the fact that it is getting worse." The country smells like an armpit, they pour sauce over all the food, the women are castrating, the men are jerks, the wine is overpriced, jihadis are infiltrating the country -- nope, nope, no reason for anti-depressants! The French are avid consumers of pills and potions of all kinds, to the extent that the health minister, Jean-François Mattei, faced with a budget overrun of â¬6.1bn (£4.2bn), this summer listed some 900 so-called medicines (out of a total of 4,300 prescribed in France) that would no longer be reimbursed by the health service because they had "little or no recognisable medical effect". Does that include all the "enlarge-your-manhood" pills? They included such popular Gallic remedies as "bronchial lubricants" for the lungs, "hepatitic protectors" for the liver, "veinotonics" for the circulation and "choleretics" for the bile. Panoplies of medicines exist here for ailments that do not appear to exist anywhere else, such as la crise de foie (liver crisis). Wonder if Dominic deVillepin takes pills for âprétendu être hommeâ (being alleged to be a man)? A dangerous dependence on mood-altering drugs is an altogether more serious problem. The question troubling some health professionals is whether it is the unique French attitude towards illness, most memorably portrayed in MoliÚreâs 17th-century comedy Le Malade Imaginaire, that has driven them to drugs, or the excellence of the countryâs health system. The French are plainly not sicker than anyone else: Debatable. according to yesterdayâs survey, while 9% of them were prescribed antidepressants in 2000, only 4.7% could be clinically diagnosed as suffering from depression. "Has the French approach to illness and the body brought about a health system that panders to le malade imaginaire, or has the efficiency and popularity of the system itself bred a whole nation of hypochondriacs?" asked one Paris doctor, Fabrice Henard. "Either way, itâs something we should worry about urgently." Edouard Zarifian, a professor of medical psychology, said both patient and doctor are to blame: patients because they will not be happy unless they walk out of a consultation with a sheaf of prescriptions, and doctors because they are happy to write them. But change can only come by altering doctorsâ perceptions, he argues. "French doctors have become merchants of false happiness", Prof Zarifian said recently. "They are unable to resist the pressures of either the patients or the big drugs companies. They are the ones who really need educating." Yeah, letâs blame the doctors! Posted by: Steve White 2003-11-08 |
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