Psychiatric medications

I sometimes feel like the odd one out these days because I don’t take and have never taken psychiatric drugs. No anti anxiety, no antidepressants. I consider myself an anxious person and I think at certain times of my life I was depressed, though it was more episodic and circumstance based than constant. I have seen doctors and counsellors at various points in my life for mental health reasons. But nobody has ever handed me a prescription for anything. I haven’t thought a lot about that over the years, but as I get older and learn more, I am increasingly grateful for my doctors’ forbearance.

Most recently I listened to 

this podcast, The Dangers of Psychiatric Medication.

It was a bit shocking, though not a surprise. Among the issues raised:

• Psychiatric drugs are tested on a short term basis, a month to three months, but most often prescribed indefinitely. Therefore there is little or no evidence they are safe long term;
• Dependency is essentially a given with all drugs, with some leading to dependency quicker. This means that when dosage is reduced or stopped, there are withdrawal symptoms. These symptoms often lead people to believe that they “need” the drug, not realizing they are experiencing withdrawal not their original problem;
• Many people still believe that they have a “chemical imbalance” in their brain, and that taking drugs fixes it. With the possible exception of a few rare conditions, this is simply not true. Brains are highly complex systems and there is no way to simply add a chemical and fix a problem without affecting other parts of the system. Plus mental health problems are usually caused by circumstances, not chemistry. Drugs may be effective if they are used short term to help the person deal with the problem, but this is not often what happens: instead the drug is taken  long term.
• The “chemical imbalance” idea is specifically promoted by commercial interests as it leads to a perceived need for the product

Psychiatric medications are not an area of personal expertise for me (again I am grateful to not have personal experience to add to this discussion!) Nevertheless I see the need to understand better what is going on with the frequent prescribing of these drugs, the fact that an awful lot of people are taking them, and to identify and correct any fallacies that I find.

It also makes more urgent that question: what do you do when life is really tough and you truly struggle to cope? Because life is tough! If I continue to choose not to take any drugs (and this is my plan) I definitely need to keep learning about alternative ways to approach life and its challenges.