Have Pain? Pop a Pill!
We Americans are taking more medication today than ever before.
Mental health drug prescriptions for adults have increased 73% for adults and 50% for children over 10 years. In 2006, "one in 10 adults and one in 20 children reported having a prescription for a mental-health drug," according to the Wall St. Journal.
This increase in medication for mental health purposes is even greater than medication used for physical illnesses: Whereas drugs account for 26% of total health-care costs, it accounts for a whopping 51% of mental health-care costs!
People are now convinced - by pharmaceutical companies and HMOs? - they can achieve mental health quickly and easily by popping pills. As stated in the Wall St. Journal, "mental-health care has tipped toward the use of the psychiatric drugs while there hasn't been the same growth in the use of so-called psychosocial therapies, such as seeing a therapist." Why spend hours at the shrink when the pill will shrink the problem away?
Therapy takes work; pill popping doesn't.
Psychotropic medication is an essential ingredient of many patients' treatment plan. Let us not go to the opposite antiquated notion that mental illness is the result of a person’s deficiency or sin, and that anybody can rid themselves of emotional suffering. A person can neither cause disease nor talk it away.
The refrigerator mother does not cause autism.
However, there is a huge downside to relying solely on medication. When you leave the physician’s office, prescription in hand, you still need to get along with your family and function in society.
Medication does not eradicate the pain of psychological problems nor cure psychiatric illness. Rather, by means of stabilizing a person's physical world, medication enables him or her to learn how to cope with and enjoy living.
Medication cannot substitute for effort. There are no magic pills.
Mental health drug prescriptions for adults have increased 73% for adults and 50% for children over 10 years. In 2006, "one in 10 adults and one in 20 children reported having a prescription for a mental-health drug," according to the Wall St. Journal.
This increase in medication for mental health purposes is even greater than medication used for physical illnesses: Whereas drugs account for 26% of total health-care costs, it accounts for a whopping 51% of mental health-care costs!
People are now convinced - by pharmaceutical companies and HMOs? - they can achieve mental health quickly and easily by popping pills. As stated in the Wall St. Journal, "mental-health care has tipped toward the use of the psychiatric drugs while there hasn't been the same growth in the use of so-called psychosocial therapies, such as seeing a therapist." Why spend hours at the shrink when the pill will shrink the problem away?
Therapy takes work; pill popping doesn't.
Psychotropic medication is an essential ingredient of many patients' treatment plan. Let us not go to the opposite antiquated notion that mental illness is the result of a person’s deficiency or sin, and that anybody can rid themselves of emotional suffering. A person can neither cause disease nor talk it away.
The refrigerator mother does not cause autism.
However, there is a huge downside to relying solely on medication. When you leave the physician’s office, prescription in hand, you still need to get along with your family and function in society.
Medication does not eradicate the pain of psychological problems nor cure psychiatric illness. Rather, by means of stabilizing a person's physical world, medication enables him or her to learn how to cope with and enjoy living.
Medication cannot substitute for effort. There are no magic pills.
posted by Dr. Spiegel at
9:44 AM
2 Comments:
A psychiatrist quoted in a NY Times article on depression describes the similarity between physical and mental illness and the role of medication: “You can’t speak to an ulcer,” he said. “You can’t reason with it. First you cure the ulcer, then you go on to talk about the way you feel.”
By
Dr. Spiegel, at Tuesday, May 12, 2009
I enjoy your ezine very much. I am a big believer in effort.
By
J, at Wednesday, May 13, 2009
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