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This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. Modern medicine is not in the business of curing diseases. It's all about disease and symptom management.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I take Wellbutrin and Lamictal (a mood stabilizer) every single day for PTSD and I wouldn’t really be able to function without them. I really wouldn’t call myself or the psychiatrist who prescribed them irresponsible. I’d say it’s equally irresponsible to make a blanket statement about something that does actually help people in certain circumstances. That being said, there are a number of GPs out there who prescribe…
I think the "irresponsibility" was aimed at the medical field, not at the patients. At least that was how I decided to read it. EDIT: Also, I think that even for the patients where the cause of the depression is not "chemical" in origin, that does not reduce the severity of the illness in the slightest. It just means that the causes may lie elsewhere (for example externally). I have been depressed as an indirect resu…
This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. Modern medicine is not in the business of curing diseases. It's all about disease and symptom management.
Are you saying that people are not trying to cure diseases? And instead they are only trying to manage them? If so, that is unequivocally wrong and misinformed.
The use of these anti-depressants is extremely irresponsible. Most people who use them dont even have an inherant chemical problem. This will all be looked back upon as very stupid indeed.
I take Wellbutrin and Lamictal (a mood stabilizer) every single day for PTSD and I wouldn’t really be able to function without them. I really wouldn’t call myself or the psychiatrist who prescribed them irresponsible. I’d say it’s equally irresponsible to make a blanket statement about something that does actually help people in certain circumstances. That being said, there are a number of GPs out there who prescribe…
We would not have a healthy, happy, functional family without these types of interventions available.
I found (I suspect like you) that having an psychiatrist - an MD, who can provide both cognitive/behavioral and pharmacological interventions - is the key.
This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. Modern medicine is not in the business of curing diseases. It's all about disease and symptom management.
This is psychiatry . We don't know how to cure the underlying diseases, because we don't entirely understand them. When the field can actually cure them, like for PTSD and certain anxiety disorders, it's very happy to.
When I tried stopping after the 5mg dose I had constant vertigo symptoms and incredible difficulty sleeping.
What I ended up doing was cutting the pills in half for a few weeks, then quarters, then removing one day a week from the schedule until I was down 2.5mg/wk. Finally I was able to stop, and only was mildly affected for 3 weeks after that.
That stuff does weird things to your brain. On the flip side, I couldn't have gotten through some really rough times without it.
This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. Modern medicine is not in the business of curing diseases. It's all about disease and symptom management.
> Modern medicine is not in the business of curing diseases. I know enough people in the field of modern medicine to know that that is hyperbole. At least in the European countries that I have lived in. EDIT: I am sorry to hear from the responses to this that this may not be quite so hyperbolic in the US. I hope that trend will be reversed somehow.
I was up to 10mg/daily of Lexapro for two years. When my doctor and I agreed it was time to stop taking it, his advice was to go down to 5mg for a week, then stop. When I tried stopping after the 5mg dose I had constant vertigo symptoms and incredible difficulty sleeping. What I ended up doing was cutting the pills in half for a few weeks, then quarters, then removing one day a week from the schedule until I was down…
A business is about making the most money possible: Maximizing revenue is about minimizing the main costs which are generated by the activities of:
(a) acquiring the customer (through: advertising and marketing) and,
(b) retaining the customer (in this case: through dependency).
There are alternatives to anti-depressants. Some people quit depression for good with a well researched and planned LSD trip combined with long-term daily mindful meditation.
No, I'm not saying everybody should take LSD.