Do doctors in Ireland underprescribe routinely?

nigel_wilson

Compared to the US and Canada? I have a few relatives who live in California and one of them has had similar mental health and eye problems that I experience.

Despite the notion that American mental health is "poorly funded", my cousins gotten much more in the way of a selection of medication and I would argue time with a psychiatrist than I have here. He was even offered to take trial treatments in psychedelics treatments.

Now people are weary of medication being over-prescribed compared with other alternatives like CBT but I would argue that it's better to over-prescribe than under-prescribe because patients can simply refuse but the opposite rarely happens.

Being struck off by the medical council is probably a fear but there should be much more leeway, a good balance struck IMO. No point in denying psychiatric drugs and other medicines only for patients to suffer needlessly or even take their own lives.

Loves_lorries

When it comes to the culture and philosophy with respect of prescribing medication and especially pain killers, Irish medics are particularly puritan, a view of enduring pain being good for the soul prevails.

It's a bad joke that often if you have to go to casualty for a. Break of some kind, they prescribe paracetamol, paracetamol is not even strong enough for a slightly worse than average headache.

Nonoperational

Nonsense

Taco Chips

Loves_lorries wrote: »

When it comes to the culture and philosophy with respect of prescribing medication and especially pain killers, Irish medics are particularly puritan, a view of enduring pain being good for the soul prevails.

It's a bad joke that often if you have to go to casualty for a. Break of some kind, they prescribe paracetamol, paracetamol is not even strong enough for a slightly worse than average headache.

Opiates and many other types of painkillers are not good for headaches. The levels of prescribing Oxynorm etc in the US over the last 20 years have come back to bite them in a huge way.

Wesser

They may prescribe more but they have millions of patients dependant and addicted to drugs and an epidemic of illicit drug dependence all fuelled by liberal attitudes to drug advertising and prescribing.

martyoo

Surely a better question to ask is why they overprescribe in the US. A pill for every ill!

Victor

Realise that most drugs have side effects.