2023-06-15 10:14:56
Anxiolytics are not harmlessits chronic and prolonged use has consequences and the first is a increased risk of mortality by 21%but in Spain their consumption is trivialized and Orfidal, Valium, Tranxilium and Lexatin are considered “first-aid medicines”, where they arrive due to an excess of medical prescription.
In an interview with Efe, within the framework of the XXIX national congress of the Spanish Society of General and Family Physicians (SEMG), the head of the mental health working group, Antonio Torres, explains that “this does not mean that the doctor has blame” but rather the doctor is forced to respond – within five minutes of a Primary Care consultation – to a social demand in which the patient demands “quick relief” to your symptoms.
Spain is world leader in the consumption of benzodiazepinesa medication used to treat anxiety, stress, insomnia, muscle spasms and epileptic seizures, and which taken continuously -for more than three months- causes muscle weakness, motor coordination problems and memory disturbances, but also maintains a degree of sedation during the day that is the cause of traffic and work accidents
for exams
8% of the Spanish population uses benzodiazepines daily and 10% does so every month. Consumption in Spain is 100 daily doses per 1,000 inhabitantsfollowed by Portugal with 84 daily doses and Belgium, 80 and very far from the 0.4 of Germany.
According to the head of the SEMG mental health group, the profile is very wide and it ranges from the youngest who request a prescription for this medication due to the anxiety generated by taking an exam or obtaining a driver’s license to those over 65 years of age, for whom chronic consumption has a high risk of causing falls and accidents at home due to drowsiness causing.
There are also young people who make a recreational use and use these drugs after taking stimulants, such as amphetamines. “If they’re really fast, with benzodiazepines they want to slow down before they go home,” she says.
In this abusive consumption is involved population of all ages. According to Torres, there has been a paradigm shift in vital conflicts: “Our society is not for waiting or for situations of reflection or slow therapies, and seeks immediate relief.”
And it is that what was previously an upset, a duel or a personal conflict has become an anxious process because “one of the symptoms is to feel anxiety, but anxiety itself is not a disease“, specifies this mental health expert who admits that “vital processes have been medicalized.”
stop misuse
The person in charge of the SEMG mental health group considers that “when a medication is misused, or over-prescribed, the obligation is to stop that misuse” and Spain must take the reins to reduce these very high consumption figures.
In Torres’s opinion, the solution involves the support of the institutions and a national pact led by the Ministry of Health, as occurred with the misuse of antibiotics, but also to facilitate patient information in the consultation so that you perceive the risks of regularly consuming anxiolytics. According to this expert, the simple verbal explanation from the doctor to the patient causes 18% to abandon consumption and if documentation or cards are added to read at home, the percentage rises to 25%.
If to these two simple techniques we add the consultation follow-up for a time, the dropout rate of patients who “disconnected” from benzodiazepines reached 75%.
For this reason, Torres believes that with strong institutional support and social awareness, the prescription of these drugs would stop being so relaxed, and would be limited to the pathologies that really require it.
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