Reply #3: It's the pharmaceutical companies. In the 70s, the companies [View All]

[no_hypocrisy]

were blatant with their advertising in popular medical journals and periodicals. The gist would be a picture of a (male) physician listening to a (woman) patient. She looked worried and he looked "concerned" (but bored). The ad was for an antidepressant medication. The unspoken message was time management. It takes about 15-20 minutes to listen to "blather" from women patients who had nondescript but constant worries but only 2 minutes to write a prescription to get them out of the office. Not only sexist messages about women patients, but propounding the use of their products when not necessarily required.

Now, there are SOME valid cases for prescription of these agents, but I believe that they are too complicated for the necessary assessment and monitoring by any physician who is not a psychiatrist. Cardiologists and internists don't have the training -- or the time to do this follow-up treatment when they prescribe antidepressants.