"People held on for two years." The Russians were hooked on antidepressants

Over the past month, the Russians bought 43% more packs of antidepressants than the same month a year earlier. Sales of antipsychotics increased by 35%. The correspondent of the North. Realia, together with experts and patients, was versed in what could affect the increase in demand for drugs and whether the Russians later became more depressed.

Scientists have been talking about the deterioration of the psychological state against the background of pandemia for several months. In November last year, the authoritative medical journal Lancet published an article by experts from the British Oxford University, in which they analyzed 69 million medical maps of the US inhabitants, more than 62 thousand of which were ill with coronavirus.

The study showed that almost every fifth American was diagnosed with a mental disorder within three months after recovery. Most often it was anxiety, depression and insomnia. “This is probably due to the combination of both psychological stress factors associated with this particular pandemia and the physical consequences of the disease,” said Michael Bloomfield, psychiatrist-consultant of the University College of London.

Before them, Italian scientists from the Institute in San Rafael have investigated the condition of more than 400 patients who suffered coronavirus. A month after recovery, more than half of them had at least one psychiatric symptom.

Last week, the results of such a study were published in the journal Science. It was analyzed by medical records of almost six million people, of which 154 thousand were ill with Covid. Scientists have found that they have been excited 40% more often diagnosed depression.

Chances 50 to 50

Scientists have no consensus about what exactly leads to depression. Since the beginning of the Pandemia Andrei Shmilovich, the head of the Department of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology, RNIMU named after Pirogov and the founder of the Re-alt Center, studied several dozen studies on the so-called post-shack depression.

The data is very disparate, the psychiatrist notes, and there is no convincing evidence that the post -shaped state of people is more to other diseases leads to depression. The probability of this, the expert says 50 to 50.

Marina Sokolova From Vologda, she became seriously ill with coronavirus at the beginning of 2020 - according to the doctors, she was on the verge of death. At that time, she already had signs of depression, and the difficult course of coronavirus only worsened everything. After recovery, she was diagnosed with anxious-depressive disorder and wrote out "Zoloft".

-Later, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSR) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCR) were added to my diagnosis. The latter was my way to cope with the unbearable fear around the pandemic. When the OCD appeared, serious problems began: I could not leave the house, I was afraid of public places, stopped meeting people, ”she says.

Schmilovich notes that psychiatry has long been known: infectious diseases can provoke clinical depression, but cannot be a cause. Such a provocation can be the flu, herpes, and SARS, and any other infection.

- I also had depressed patients in the post -shaped period, but all these patients had already encountered depression to Covid by that time. In such cases, a viral infection provokes relapse, violating the chemical balance of the brain, ”the psychiatrist explains.

Incorrect diagnostics

The demand for antidepressants, according to research, increased before the appearance of coronavirus. Before the start of the pandemic, from 2013 to 2019, Russians began to buy twice as many drugs for the treatment of depression. What then, that now experts associated an increase in demand, including the possible hyperdiagnosis of depression.

A sharp increase in sales of drugs of the last year can really be associated with coronavirus, but in a different sense. One of the manifestations of the post -shoe syndrome is asthenia, the disorder of the psyche, which is primarily associated with a sharp decrease in physical activity and cognitive abilities, says Schmilovich. Outwardly, it can resemble a depressed state, which is observed in patients with clinical depression.

-To the right and left it occurs that, due to the similarity of these two states, incorrect diagnoses are made. This is especially common when depression is taken to diagnose and treat not psychiatrists. For various reasons, we can delegate this function to doctors of other specialties - therapists, neurologists, gastroenterologists and even infectious disease specialists. Psychiatrists really lack all over the world, including in European countries and in the USA.

Marketologist Anastasia Nefedova From the city of the island in the Pskov region, together with her husband, she was ill with coronavirus in August 2021. She transferred the disease heavier and after recovery often noted depression, irritability and increased fatigue.

- I could not work, did not want to see friends, often cried, could not sleep. My husband did not have such problems. As a result, two months later, when I was already threatened to dismiss from work, he convinced me to see a doctor. I told the therapist what was happening to me. She wrote on the “Depressive Disorders” card and prescribed two drugs, one from depression, the second for sleep.

Nefyodov took no more than two weeks, the condition during this time, according to her, only worsened - headache and complete loss of appetite were added to the symptoms. The therapist could not help anything else and sent the patient to Pskov to a psychiatrist. He canceled the drugs and redirected Nefyodov to a psychologist, with whom she has been dealing with for more than a month. She was not canceled the diagnosis, but she no longer accepts pills.

Medical hyperdiagnostics is a topic that psychologists often encounter, notes the candidate of psychological sciences, psychologist-researchist Olga Makhovskaya. The patient is immediately planted on antidepressants, and the reason is psychological and requiring therapy.

- Those who have been ill, according to research, have a depressed tail. How much it lasts is incomprehensible, since the studies are limited in time. Some patients with post -shoe syndrome (about 10-12%) and in six months feel depressed. The number of such people accumulates, and the market situation is responsible for this.

There was no total deterioration in the state of Russians, according to Makhovskaya, social depression is a normal reaction to abnormal circumstances like pandemic. This is not the result of chemical reactions in the brain that occur with clinical depression, and it is not necessary to treat it with drugs. But not all doctors know how to diagnose correctly.

She connects the increase in cases of Russians addressing doctors, including with post -traumatic stress disorder - a delayed psyche response to the initial stage of the pandemic and shock from the fact that Covid really threatens life.

- People held on for two years. We can always hold on inertia for some time, but in the end, economic and social fatigue occurs. When we lose someone when relative poverty occurs, when fakes and conspiracy theories in the news-we can no longer cope.

With a post -traumatic disorder in patients, an angodonia is observed - a loss of sensitivity, when people are still becoming. She can stand behind the "adaptation" to new conditions when people say that they are already used to it. And this phenomenon, according to Makhovskaya, can also be confused with depression.

Cultural code

Another reason may be that depression is an aesthetized disease in Russia, which is "irreplaceable."

- The experience of longing is practically our cultural code: Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Zvyagintsev, Tarkovsky, Mikhalkov. This is a cultural model that distinguishes us from the Americans, ”explains Makhovskaya. - They always have stories with morality, conclusion, hint, how to get out of a particular situation. We have diagnosis history, they have no optimism, and I think this is our national feature.

The patients interviewed by a correspondent of the North. The patients, on the contrary, said that they had encountered their illness condemnation and stigmatization. Petersburger Svetlana Afanasyeva, who last year was diagnosed with anxious-depressive disorder with panic attacks, says that basically the negative comes from the older generation.

- In my case - from the side of relatives. They depreciated my illness, saying that I think too much and wound myself. This, of course, hurts, but I'm not trying to prove something to them. Friends all supported, ”she says.

Anastasia Nefyodova says that she was ashamed of the diagnosis and hid from friends that she began to go to a psychologist: "We are all under 40 years old, the children are almost adults, and then some kind of newfangled sore." As a result, it was the 15-year-old daughter that helped Nefyodova to stop feeling “inferior” and ashamed of her condition.

The father of 24-year-old Vologda Sokolova proved to her that in all antidepressants there are drugs, and psychologists simply pump money from patients. Mom also did not support: "Do you want to be dependent on the pills?"

“I had to explain for a very long time and patiently that my diagnoses are not a whim or whims, but a real disease,” says Sokolova. “And I'm still not sure that they could really understand me.”

Is the site blocked?
Go around the lock!