There isn't a country in the world that comes close to the amount of medications and pharmaceuticals consumed by Americans on a per capita basis. It would be one thing if all this medication actually was a net benefit for the patient by improving the quality of one's life, or reducing the pain thereof, or for just making for a more humane and more considerate experience when dealing with medical issues, but in actuality, that often isn't the case, while medical doctors, medicine, and pharmaceuticals can most definitely improve the lot for certain diseases and ills, it can also create new problems, mask the real problem, and actually do material harm to the patient.
The day that America decided that it was okay to market pharmaceuticals to Americans via print media, advertising on television and radio, and now advertising on the internet, is the day that the growth rate of the usage of pharmaceuticals within this country began to achieve a much more pronounced trajectory. The bottom line is that on any given day, you may experience a headache, a stomach ache, general aches and pains, not sleeping well, anxiety, or all sorts of things, which typically come and typically go in your life. It use to be, if these things did not become chronic, or of a real hindrance, that people would just go about their business, but nowadays these advertisements are so ubiquitous and cover so many "conditions" and sell the promise that they provide what appears to be instant relief, that Americans are sucked into believing the hype.
It's bad enough that American adults take or are prescribed way too much medication for things that don't really need medication, but it is an entirely different thing for children, to be prescribed medication for being overactive, hyper, lacking in attention skills, or need an antihistamine, or need to relieve asthma, and so forth, in which these young children really don’t have much of a say on the matter, as they assume that their parents as well as their pediatrician know what is best for them, but alas this isn't always so. So too, children that are prescribed drugs for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), may easily start a process that never ends, that is to say, they are on ADHD medication all of their life, which doesn't seem like a good solution in the first place, or if a possible solution, should not be the first one to engage in.
While there are most definitely people that do require medication, and while there are situations in which medication is very effective as a remedy, it is also important to recognize that the body, is a well constructed and a well constituted machine, that incredibly can and will, under the right circumstances in many instances, heal itself, if only given enough time to do so. There are times when urgency requires urgent responses, so too, there are numerous times, when patience and attentiveness in all of its many forms, is by far the best response, and the best thing for a person. The bottom line is that even in the best of cases pills are two-edge swords which is why pharmaceuticals have their attendant disclaimers written in very small print that simply go on and on and on.