It’s no wonder then that America’s problem with overmedication hides in plain sight. While we’re all dimly aware that we take a lot of pills, we have no intuition of how big the problem is. And when you lay out the stats, the figures are nothing short of terrifying, as this infographic shows. While it suffers from rhetorical bombast, the tensions suggested by the chart are stark: Even though we take tons of pills, they seldom actually work. So while 1/2 of all Americans take a prescription drug and 1/4 of women take an anti-depressant, prescription drugs only seem to work 30% of the time. Meanwhile, 85% of new drugs have been found to have little or no benefit. And those miracle anti-depressants? They don’t even outperform placebos:
...
Doctors know that. They know what’s expected of them. They know that telling someone, "Hey, your problem will probably go away on its own in three weeks," is a good recipe for going out of business. The question is, will our belief in a little magic pill ever go away, even when the pills lose their magic?
Source: fastcodesign.com