- PARIS -- Nearly one in four
French people are on tranquillisers, antidepressants, antipsychotics or
other mood-altering prescription drugs, according to an alarming report
published yesterday.
-
- It revealed that an average of 40% of men and women aged
over 70 in France were routinely prescribed at least one of this class
of dependence-creating drug, as well as some 4% of all children under nine.
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- "The French now consume between two and four times
as many tranquillisers and anti-depressants as the British, Italians and
Germans," one medical expert, Martine Perez, said in Le Figaro. "The
problem is not new, but this underlines the fact that it is getting worse."
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- The French are avid consumers of pills and potions of
all kinds, to the extent that the health minister, Jean-FranÁois
Mattei, faced with a budget overrun of Ä6.1bn (£4.2bn), this
summer listed some 900 so-called medicines (out of a total of 4,300 prescribed
in France) that would no longer be reimbursed by the health service because
they had "little or no recognisable medical effect".
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- They included such popular Gallic remedies as "bronchial
lubricants" for the lungs, "hepatitic protectors" for the
liver, "veinotonics" for the circulation and "choleretics"
for the bile.
-
- Panoplies of medicines exist here for ailments that do
not appear to exist anywhere else, such as la crise de foie (liver crisis).
-
- French infants suffer from something called la bronchiolite,
which in Britain would be diagnosed as a mild chest infection and left
well alone.
-
- In France, sufferers are most often prescribed a course
of antibiotics or a visit to one of the many specialists who have emerged
specially to treat the affliction.
-
- The cost of an expensive course of "thalassotherapy"
- a range of treatments involving seawater, algae and marine mud that is
claimed by some French doctors to cure arthritis, asthma, acne and even
infertility - could until very recently be reclaimed from the French health
service.
-
- A dangerous dependence on mood-altering drugs is an altogether
more serious problem. The question troubling some health professionals
is whether it is the unique French attitude towards illness, most memorably
portrayed in MoliËre's 17th-century comedy Le Malade Imaginaire, that
has driven them to drugs, or the excellence of the country's health system.
-
- The French are understandably proud of their health service.
Some 66% say they are satisfied with it, compared with 40% in Britain and
20% in Italy. It allows them to choose what doctor or specialist they want
to go to (with no need for a referral), and to have up to 70% of the cost
reimbursed by the state.
-
- The remainder is generally covered by cheap top-up insurance.
-
- The World Health Organisation rates France's health system
the best there is.
-
- But the French are plainly not sicker than anyone else:
according to yesterday's survey, while 9% of them were prescribed antidepressants
in 2000, only 4.7% could be clinically diagnosed as suffering from depression.
-
- "Has the French approach to illness and the body
brought about a health system that panders to le malade imaginaire, or
has the efficiency and popularity of the system itself bred a whole nation
of hypochondriacs?" asked one Paris doctor, Fabrice Henard. "Either
way, it's something we should worry about urgently."
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- Edouard Zarifian, a professor of medical psychology,
said both patient and doctor are to blame: patients because they will not
be happy unless they walk out of a consultation with a sheaf of prescriptions,
and doctors because they are happy to write them. But change can only come
by altering doctors' perceptions, he argues.
-
- "French doctors have become merchants of false happiness",
Prof Zarifian said recently. "They are unable to resist the pressures
of either the patients or the big drugs companies. They are the ones who
really need educating."
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2003
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1080507,00.html
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