You could make the argument for it, but this seems completely out of left field.
> Depression can increase the risk of chronic illness, including the disease of substance abuse. Up to a third of clinically depressed people engage in drug or alcohol abuse. These chemical intoxicants can become a form of self-medication for soothing the feelings of low self-worth, hopelessness, and despair that characterize this mental health disorder.
Perhaps I miss some nuance of what you're questioning because I find it surprising that my point was strange to you and now I'm confused.
Abuse vs use, unless you can show people didn't get their antidepressants from a psychiatrist or other mental health professional (don't know who is allowed to prescribe them in Portugal).
> In my opinion people are just medicating in other ways, but life still sucks.
Whatever the source of the issue was, we haven't fixed it. We just got better at dealing with the accute issues created by the hard street drugs, minimizing drug related crime and so on. But the answer shouldn't be to just pump all the would-be drug abusers full of ADs. Or maybe it is, what do I know.
You talk about this as if its small potatoes!
These are major major issues that poison society even in richer countries like the UK. Having lived in London for half a decade and seen what a regime of prohibition has led to there - I would take the "flawed" Portuguese program.
My main point is I think we still have loads of mental health issues in Portugal, possibly masked by the super high rate of AD use in our population, which keeps growing. Daily dosages have more than doubled since 2009 (75 DD per 1000 people to 150 DD per 1000 people) and it's accelerating.
In my opinion people are just medicating in other ways, but life still sucks.