Pharmaceutical Prejudice

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I don't know, really, since it depends on who you ask....."self" is a very subjective thing.

There are different ways I can look at it, personally, but I always come back to the same thoughts about how all the physical stuff that is me is inextricably connected to the more abstract stuff that is me....my experience and existence as a conscious being is both shaped/influenced and expressed in part by/through things like my neurochemistry and neuroanatomy. My basic sense of self is really just my ongoing lived experience of existing and perceiving the world around me in a very concrete way.

I take medication for my ADHD and, while I don't think it makes me a totally different person, I think it has influenced my brain development in permanent ways (not in bad ways, though, as far as I know -- and certainly not all by itself....so this doesn't bother me). I also feel different when I'm on medication than when I'm off medication, and I can't say I'm entirely comfortable with the medicated feeling....I may never be entirely comfortable with it.

Thanks, dianthus. You as well.

I've never really understood that. I especially hate it when people judge another for taking a medication, when it's actually HELPING them. I don't really care much about how other people treat mental illness (as long as it isn't harming another person).

Some people are affected negatively by meds. I am affected negatively by Ativan. It makes me act drunk, and I don't mean slightly tipsy. I mean falling on the ground drunk.

However, I am taking antidepressants right now and haven't had any negative effects. For me, they have worked better alone than therapy alone did. I often feel like there is something wrong with me because meds work better than therapy. I am not anti-therapy, and in fact, I think therapy can be very useful, but sometimes, for some people (not everyone) it's not enough.

There are downsides to therapy if you get the wrong therapist. I've had therapists that have been quite judgmental. Not helpful at all.

I am doing therapy right now and I think a combination of meds AND therapy is the way to go for me.

Why is this not the primary problem? I kinda think it might be. I will be on medication for the rest of my life. There is nothing I can do to will away my chronic depression and autism, no big issue that needs to be resolved. My brain just doesn't work right.

I think you are right.

I don't enjoy talk therapy. It upsets me. I go over things that have hurt me and feel awful. I have found CBT to be useful in how I handle my thoughts and feelings. I used to let them get the better of me, but now I know I have to control them.
But if I wasn't taking meds all the CBT in the world wouldn't pull me out of the ball of despair I would find myself in.

Well, since psych meds aren't actually substances found naturally in any person's body nor are they found naturally in anything humans eat, I agree with ToughDiamond that the cause of mental illness is not a deficiency of psych meds -- although mental illness may be caused by a deficiency or excess of some natural substance that psych meds can increase or decrease the levels of. (The cause of the deficiency/excess could be entirely genetic -- something you're born with/born to develop no matter what -- or it could be caused partly or entirely by environmental factors, including development/experience or even just your current situation in life.....and in any case it could be a permanent and immutable deficiency/excess or it could be temporary or mutable.)

I don't think that the only two options are "will away your mental illness" or "take psych meds".....those things are not even opposites on a spectrum.

Nobody can just decide to stop being depressed, but that doesn't mean that medication is always a good treatment option, let alone the only treatment or the best treatment, for every depressed person . (And the same goes for other issues like anxiety or whatever.)

Your experience of being depressed and needing medication doesn't invalidate another person's experience of being depressed and not needing medication (or even being way better off without it) -- I would say this even if you both had the same kind of depression with the same cause.

Just because other people don't need medication doesn't mean that you don't, and just because you do need medication doesn't mean other people don't need it.



I don't think there is a "right" or a "wrong" when it comes to a person's concept/sense of self. I have been told other people have a concept/sense of "self" that is made up of narratives and social roles and stuff about how others see them....that's very different from my sense of self but I see it as equally valid.

That's a straw man. I did not say that meds were available in nature. I said that they positively effect my brain chemistry.


Not sure why you are telling me this, as it is obvious.

Before we had "psychiatric" meds, all we had was alcohol (and less legitimately, laudanum and other narcotics). Try reading what mental illness was like before we knew how to treat it. It was awful, and hopeless. Countless family members were locked away in an attic or sent to an asylum that was essentially a warehouse.

Now, (some) schizophrenics can have jobs and families and live outside of an institution. Now, people with OCD and other anxiety-related disorders can gain some control over their feelings and thoughts. Now, (some) depressives and manic depressives can access their best selves and hold their worst episodes at bay.

For pure depression, talk therapy (primarily CBT but other forms too) have promise for preventing future episodes, to a greater extent than meds alone.

To my mind, it is helpful to know something about the history of psychiatry in order to contemplate this issue of self versus mental defect.

Yep....when you were in Bedlam, you were surrounded by Bedlam.

Yup, that's what I meant. The primary cause of mental illness might be brain damage, metabolic imbalance, or bad psychological experiences. I don't see anything controversial about that.

Yes, but I'm not talking about the cause. I'm talking about how you deal with the problem. What I am not getting is why psychological experiences, for example, should not be treated with chemicals that fix the problem. I believe my depression comes from psychological damage (from undiagnosed autism and unrelated parental neglect and abandonment issues.) It doesn't go away. I may know that I am depressed because of things that have happened to me. I may use strategies to guide my thinking so as not to feed the thoughts, but I'm still going to be physically depressed. I don't understand why you would suggest that this is a temporary band-aid. Is that what you call insulin? Maybe diabetic people will be able to come to terms with what caused their diabetes - eating habits, etc., but should they think that one day they won't need insulin (I'm talking about diabetes that can't be managed by eating in a certain way.)
I guess I'm just wondering why one would want to get away from something that helps. The chemical nature of the aid should not make it unsuitable. I'm not sure why the medicine should have to match the physical nature of the cause.

If you read the post I made that started all this, you'll see I didn't particularly take an anti-meds view, I said that it was up to the individual. My own philosophy for treating myself is that I'd use them only as a last resort, because of the obvious inherent risks. The treatment for psych problems doesn't in my view have to match the cause. It's perhaps better when it does, but it doesn't always work like that. If you feel you must take tablets for an ailment, then of course you're entitled to do that. I thought I'd already made that clear.

ToughDiamond literally said "the primary problem is not the lack of psych meds in a person's body", which I understood to mean exactly the same thing as "the primary problem is not a [deficiency] of psych meds in a person's body"..... I was simply explaining why this statement is correct, using the concept of "deficiency" in the human body to do so. I did not intend to suggest you believed psych meds were found in nature.

In respond to ToughDiamond's statement you literally said, "Why is this not the primary problem?" which reads as you saying the primary problem could actually be a deficiency of psych meds in a person's body. I did not know for sure if you meant that mental illness is cause by a deficiency/excess of specific neurochemicals, the levels of which are affected by psych meds.

All I've done is point out that ToughDiamond is technically correct in what they said and then go on to try to find common ground with you/indicate that I largely agree with the idea that mental illness is caused by deficiency/excess of specific neurochemicals....how is it a strawman argument when all I am trying to do is explain how a statement someone made is true (in response to a question you actually asked about the validity/truth of that statement -- you asked "Why is [lack of psych meds] not the primary problem?" and I was telling you why) and then say how you and I might agree on something, at least partially if not wholly (not all of what I said was just agreeing with you -- I was also stating how I see things just to state how I see things, when I was talking about how even deficiency/excess of neurochemicals can have different causes)?

This is a misunderstanding, I was not using a strawman argument -- I was not trying to discredit you, and I was not twisting your words or pretending you said things you never said. I was not deliberately misrepresenting you in any way, although I have no problem accepting that I may have done so by accident and for that I am sorry.



Because neither you nor ToughDiamond referenced yourself specifically so I thought you were arguing that your experience applied to everyone.....I misunderstood you.

ToughDiamond said "The primary problem is not the lack of psych meds in a person's body", and this is a reference to people generally and mental illness generally, not specifically to you. None of the statement of ToughDiamond's that you quoted referred specifically to you or your mental illness, only to people/mental illness generally.

You then responded to ToughDiamond's general statement with, "Why is this not the problem?" which I took to be you arguing that mental illness is/could be always caused by an inherent lack of some neurotransmitter that can only be corrected with medication -- because you didn't say anything about only referencing yourself and your experiences rather than continuing to talk about people and mental illness generally, as ToughDiamond had.

Talking about your personal experience after you say "Why is this not the problem?" seemed to me like you were holding up your personal experience as proof that "this is the problem" for everyone/in general, rather than that you were saying your personal experience was that medications help, and not even talking about cause any more(?)....because you didn't say "why can't this be the problem?" or "why is this never the problem?" or "This is the problem for me" or anything else to suggest that you were talking about yourself or acknowledging that different people can have different causes/need different treatments for their mental illness -- you said, "Why is this not the problem?" which references one single problem, and no specific people. And your statement occured in the context of a discussion that you started because of your perception that someone other than yourself should take medication and was ignoring his problems just because he didn't want to take medication, and your curiosity about why anyone would refuse medication....it's not like your thread is only about you offering opinions about your own experience, so unless you make it clear in a statement that you are only talking about yourself versus other people versus everyone, I have no way of knowing who/whose problems you might be referring to and I will just go with your actual words or guess based on the general context and other things you've said.

Last edited by animalcrackers on 28 Jul 2016, 5:27 pm, edited 8 times in total.

I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be...I also see no reason why they should be.

A person could ask, "Why should psychological experiences be treated with chemicals if they can be treated/managed to the affected person's satisfaction in some other way?" and it would be an equally valid question.

I don't think that this is a matter of "should"....there is no "should", it's just a matter of personal preference and personal choice and individual needs and circumstances.



Because the possible or even previously experienced benefits of a drug may not outweight the risks or possible/previously experienced downsides of a drug, for the person who would be taking it.

All I'm wondering about is why other solutions are better. Why should psychiatric medications be of last resort? The above statement seems to me to be presented as a truth ("normally,") as something to be generally accepted and not the usual, "it's up to the individual."

^
Not all other solutions are better, but personally as a general rule I'd much prefer talk therapy to tablets, if there's hope for the former's effectiveness. Solutions other than pills have the advantage that they don't put potentially harmful chemicals into the body, though I don't doubt that some of the more extreme non-drug therapies could be also harmful, and it could be a mistake to not take psych meds if the target condition was a pretty dire one and the meds were known to be a lot more effective than any alternative interventions. I'd not be glad to know that anybody I cared about had started taking psych meds without first considering alternatives, but as I said before, as long as the person isn't likely to harm others, as far as I'm concerned it's up to them, as it's their body and mind.

An older woman I know takes pride in the fact that (unlike most elderly people) she doesn't take any meds at all.

But my spouse and I say, entre nous, that the people in her life would probably really appreciate it if she did, as she is persistently negative and cranky. Just a thought.