Take The Tablet As A Last Resort

Posted on 14 October 2007

I was talking to a client this week about the differences between life coaching in the US as opposed to the UK. In general there aren’t that many at all. I certainly did more stress management in the UK, but I tend to believe that is because people over here accept that having a high stress level is a fact of life. It’s not by the way, or more accurately, it shouldn’t be. Some stress is a fact of life, but chronic stress needs to be dealt with, as it is responsible for 100,000’s of deaths every year either directly or indirectly. I also did more work/life balance work in the UK but again I think that is for the same reasons as I have just explained, that people over here are more accepting of spending long hours at work.

 

There is one huge difference though. Not in what I do with clients but more so their background and by that I mean the prescribed drugs they take. I am guessing from memory that less than 20% of my clients in the UK were on prescribed medication. The figure is at least tripled over here and that is being conservative. Why is that? Are there more Americans needing medical help than there are Brits? I doubt it quite frankly.

 

I think it is purely and simply because medicines are so much more available here than in the UK and people are encouraged to turn to a tablet to cure their ills. Anti-depressant drugs usually treat the symptoms and if the person doesn’t get to the root of the cause then the medication is probably going to be needed ad infinitum. The alarming rise in kids taking drugs for issues such as depression, stress and insomnia should be cause for a national outrage but for some reason people seem to accept it as ‘the way it is’

 

I am ranting a little here but I think it is a subject worth ranting about. The pharmaceutical industry makes billions of dollars from selling these drugs and they have a vested interest in promoting their sale. The do not have a vested interest in giving people a genuine cure because they would lose repeat busines.

 

If you are thinking of going to your doctor to ask for medication for a problem that is socio-environmental I urge you to seek other alternatives as well. Would a better diet help, more exercise, hiring a life coach or even a counselor? Read up on the subject at hand, could you be intolerant to certain food types and don’t know it? Could you have allergies that you are unaware? Could you have problems with mercury or any other heavy metal poisoning? These may seem absurd but they are a lot more common than most people realize and surely it’s worth trying more healthy alternatives that bombarding your body with chemicals that it was never designed to deal with.

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