Whats the game-plan here?

My therapist said that only some people need to be on psychiatric medications for the rest of their lives. In my case, there is a definite biological component to my depression/mental illness, which is unfortunate, because that can't be addressed by talk-therapy related things alone. My therapist said that for "stronger" forms of mental sickness, the best chance of recovery comes form a combination of talk-therapy and medication therapy. He said while people are on the "correct" meds, their symptoms are relieved to some degree, and they are more enabled to benifit from the therapy.

That idea makes sense, but, this is my concern: I have had mental sickness for probably my ENTIRE life; I had symptoms before I was 5 years old. Needless to say, unfortunately, there is a biological component to my mental problems. Hypothetically speaking, lets say I take the medication, and it works to a degree, and I am better able to benefit from therapy, gain new perspective, etc. Well, psych meds are kinda like a band aid covering a wound that doesn't really heal that you have to change every day, in my opinion. My concern is that once I would choose to stop taking the meds, no matter what kind of progress I had made (making friends, getting a job, etc), wouldn't I just revert to my old (and current) way of being?

I say this because the problem here is in my biology. I've been resisting medications for 8 years, but NOTHING else I have tried has worked, and believe me, I have tried. I really don't want to resign myself to the idea, and possible fact, that I have mental cancer, because the medications used to treat mental cancer are not healthy, and although this doesn't really help me now, I believe that if the biological causes of depression/mental illness were more understood, there would be safer and more effective treatments.

I dunno. I'm getting desperate. I'm tired of feeling like $#%^ all the time and not being able to do much about it. I suppose if I took medication and my symptoms were temporarily relieved, I could probably make friends and focus more on school/work. Then in 6 months or so, if I wanted to go off of the meds, even if I reverted back to my old self, at least I would have some friends that I might be able to rely on a bit for support, although I feel I might lose them anyway because in my "natural" depressed state, I am largely unable to connect with people.

Its all so frustrating though. I wish there were treatments that could be measured more scientifically, treatments that the doctors would have a more clear idea of how they work.

I have another interesting and important point, IMO, that I want to address in the post below.

One of my biggest reasons for refusing to take medication is that I feel that medication is dangerous, and to be honest, I don't disagree, at least generally speaking. I have a strong desire to live a natural lifestyle the way I believe nature intended for us. I eat natural unprocessed foods, use natural body products, etc. I've already spoken at great length to my therapist about how noe one should have to take medication for any problem, but, what good will musing about that do? There are many things in this world that ARE that SHOULD NOT be. I shouldn't have to rely on psychiatric medication for a mental illness, just like a child with cystic fibrosis shouldn't have to rely on drugs and lung transplants just so they can breathe, but simply lamenting on these sad facts of life will not get me anywhere. So what to do?

I've always told people that although I have little quality of life, and suffer a ton, I'd rather not put something that is unhealthy/unnatural into my body, because it could do me harm. However, my therapist offered an idea that really hadn't occurred to me before. He postulated that its possible that by not getting treatment in the form of psychaitric medications for my moderate to severe depression/anxiety/etc, in a way, I might be hurting myself. This is where I got really interested. He said that there are studies that show various patterns of pathology in depressed patients, like shrinking of the hippocampus, problems with memory, and various other things I can't really remember. His point was that by not getting drug treatment, I might be doing more than simply resigning myself to a life of psychic torture. I found this idea to be very interesting.

Psych drugs were not created equal. For instance antipychotics are very damaging. Anti depressants to a lesser extent and anti anxiety (provided you dont stay on them too long) to even lesser. I got this information from books by Peter Breggin.

I think you need to be clear on what your aim is. Do you want to have a less painful life - then I think take the drugs - they are guaranteed to decrease your suffering.

But if your aiming for a happy life - then I personally would minimise the drugs. But you would have to commit to alot of hard work to learn new ways of being.

This is a personal decision for you. So do as much research as you can.

I dont believe that by not taking the drugs you can do more harm, especially when research has found that taking the drugs causes organic brain damage.

All this said, if you are going through crisis with lots of anxiety there is benefit in taking the drugs in the short term (less than a month) to reset your anxiety levels so that you can give some alternative coping methods ago.


Now I am a qualified therapist and I have done loads of research into this area - but I am not a Doctor so this is just my opinion.

Hello.

So, wow. I am in a very similar situation with many of the same misgivings. I guess a lot of people are, but I've never known any!

I think you are fortunate to have a therapist who will talk you through this logically. But, like you, whenever I think about this I can end up at "I should take meds" and "I should not take meds" through equally sound/valid arguments.

I'm sorry I can't help you. However I can say that being in a similar place (you seem more advanced), I am leaning towards giving it one more HUGE push without meds... friends, family, diet, vitamins, yoga, religion if it works (heh). But if in say a year or two that didn't get me to an acceptable state, I'd try to come to terms with needing medication for life. Because at that point it's not really a choice.

Very best wishes.

I believe drugs should only be used as an absolute last resort, and I think in most cases people would be better off without them. There are a lot of alternatives, and most people don't really pursue them. Becoming truly healthy is far from healthy, but its such a valuable thing that it's worth just about any effort.

udaitaxiam,
Hi there,Im new here but have been involved in psychology both academically and as a sufferer of BDD ,depression and social phobia for approx 20 yrs.You are mistaken about a few things regarding treatment of mental illness.Firstly,CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy)as a treatment causes biological changes in the brain (and possibly other treatments also do but arent aware or esearch to show for them) so the fact that you may have a genetic predisposition to mental illness wont matter.Second,if you stop taking drugs while youve done your therapy,you will have already changed your brain and so the changes will be permanent as long as you dont slip back into old maladaptive habits of thinking and behaving.You definitely should have beeen on drugs from the beginning just to make therapy more doable and then come off them gradually under supervision when you recover.For some peopel drugs work great,they arent magic though and dont work at all for some people.Having so called biological depression doesnt mean drugs work by the way,doctors dont even have any clue what causes or what is meant by biological depression to begin with.