Blog
Kanzi Kamel

Depressing Report on Drug Use in Lebanon

This just in, the Institute for Development, Research, Advocacy and Applied Care (IDRAAC) has recently revealed that 28.5 percent of Lebanese people have at least one mental disorder.

According to this article from Executive Magazine, mental disorders in Lebanon are mostly anxiety related, the majority of which fall under the realm of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and generalized anxiety disorder. Such conditions often have even more formidable symptoms, such as chronic depression and bipolar disorder.

Most unsettling, however, is the increase in prescription drug use. Anti-anxiety medications, unlike more serious drugs, are not covered by the Ministry of Health, “due to the high prevalence of such disorder, and also because they are cheap and easily available.”

If the following picture, tweeted by nmoawad is true, then in 2011, Lebanon had consumed a frightening amount of 1,000,000 tranquilizers and 642,000 anti-depressants. That’s a whole lot of anti-anxiety pills for a population of 4 million.