Medication and psychological therapies

Psychiatric medication induces physical illness and there is a risk to life. This is true of many of the chemicals used in mental health. The worst are the antipsychotics but even antidepressants have been shown to caused Sudden Cardiac Death syndrome and suicide in some people.

Its doesn't take advanced knowledge of neurobiology to realise that none of the treatments are truly selective in the neurotransmitters and brain functions they target. That's why there are side effects unrelated to serotonin transmission or the treatment of unhappiness. This action outside the target sites affects other autoneurological mechanisms, some of which may regulate body function. Affecting this will change the way other systems in the body work and this could be a cause of reduced life expectancy. The dramatic effect of antipsychotic drugs is well established in the studies on dementia patients where life expectancy was reduced by half in very old people.

Medication is not a solution to mental ill health either. The drugs can remove symptoms but its just as easy to say, you're unhappy - go get high. Antidepressants are narcotics though they don't act as quickly as the illegal narcotics. Antipsychotics are a chemical cosh or straight jacket in pill form. Mood stabilisers remove a person's full range of emotion.

The solution of medication means that people never learn to cope with a life crisis and there's no need for healthcare to make an attempt to explore the deeper nature of the individual and understand the reasons behind their pain and suffering. Its probably because that wisdom has become in short supply over the last century as the convenience and effectiveness of drugs meant consensus thought focused on those treatments.

The safer alternative is psychological therapies but few people understand what that actually means, including myself. I think psychological therapies are like going to see a sage or a life teacher. Its not about offering an answer or a solution but helping the individual find the solution themselves. That paradigm doesn't easily fit simplistic outcome measures but that's a sign of the lack of wisdom that's so pervasive in modern society.

The solution to life's distress, unexplainable phenomenon, intense emotional crisis, life events impacting on mental health and ability to cope are treated in modern times by drugs because there are few true teachers of life left. The Royal College of Psychiatry's motto is "Let wisdom guide" but there's little wisdom in supporting state-funded opiates of the masses instead of helping people find the wisdom themselves to live life. It is a sign of psychiatists ineptitude however the wisdom has remained in the true psychologists remaining, the true sages.