Word To The Researchers

Here's a new study claiming that in Canada 56 percent of people with depression seek help from a doc or mental health care provider while in the US it's 52 percent. The study size is smallish--only 150 people in Canada, for example. But those percentages do match up nicely with percentages I've gotten from psych researchers. About half of all depressives and bipolars seek help. The proportion is supposedly higher with schizophrenics because that illness is a lot harder to, um, ignore.

If you ask why this is the case, the earnest researcher will usually reply that people don't seek help because mental illness is stigmatized. That's part of the problem, of course. But after 15 years of wide-usage of anti-depressants in American society, word has gotten out on the street that anti-depressants just aren't as effective as anyone would like them to be, or as effective as pharma companies and advocacy groups claim that they are. Would you go rushing to a doctor for help with depression if you knew going in that the illness is stigmatized and you've got between a 30 percent and 50 percent chance of hitting upon a med that works well? Many people wouldn't. And that's a problem.

Economists like to call such things "disincentives." No kidding.