[Society before and after the introduction of psychotropic drugs in therapeutic use]

Despite unavoidable subjectivity, it would appear that the use of antidepressive, anxiolytic and hypnotic agents has increased over the past years, although consumption of benzodiazepines appears to have stabilized recently. It is generally accepted that there has been a trend to medicalization of mainly social problems. The following factors have been considered: type of the person's request, with an often dominant role related to assisted behavior; medical responses, frequently marked by a preferential if not exclusive reliance on the chemical compound; financial limitations on national medical expenses, quite probably an indirect cause of changing status and role of medicine distorting the therapeutic relationships; marketing phenomena involving major economic challenges. Faced with this conflictual situation, we must try to maintain the physician's freedom to practice for patient benefit.