Western psych meds necessary evil or just evil?

[markern]

I have read SFJanes posts about her recovery from bipolar disorder and psychosis with great interest. I have myself thought a lot about how much cultivation type stuff and oriental medicine could do to cure serious mental illness. I actually think almost all anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder bipolar disorder and most psychosis, and possible to a large extent psychopathy can be curde by cultivation and eastern medicine as long as it is actually done and done right. The basics of what to do I think is fairly well understood but to really develop solid protocols for how to aproach the issue would take 20 years or something I think.

 

To which extent would people actually practice this stuff if it is very well studied scientifically and the dat

a says that this is an almost guaranteed cure? Those who are in institutions could be made/hepled to practice quite a lot because of the structure of living in such a place. Morning practice and evening practice etc. Everyone doing the same. Detox easy to organise etc. Those who live outside institutions usually have more reasorces but would have to discipline themselves to a completely different degree. With all the data available and very well thought out protocols would people practice?

 

In the current state of afairs without such data is western psych meds a good thing? I have seen people get invaluable help from them. I have also seen people get set back years from them.

[Desert Eagle]

In the current state of afairs without such data is western psych meds a good thing? I have seen people get invaluable help from them. I have also seen people get set back years from them.

 

I recently heard good things about zoloft/lustral and after the first 50 mg pill got nauseous but more energetic. tried 25 mg (half pill) once a day for 3 days and got more energy and beefing up, and feeling happier. finer motor controls and short term memory got fuzzy for a short while but other than that no problems. regained the will power to resume practice after post operative depression. I wish I tried it before, it was very helpful in my case.

 

I also tried sirdalud/tizanidin as a strong muscle relaxant. very useful for relaxation, sleep, or muscle lockup.

 

So the Tao of meds isn't that evil in the absence of a quick alternative.

Edited May 4, 2011 by Desert Eagle

[doc benway]

Psych meds allow some folks to lead relatively "normal" lives who might otherwise be chronically hospitalized, suicidal, homicidal, and so forth. The meds are clearly over utilized but, IMO, godsends for the small group of folks with severe psychosis who benefit the most from them. Some people respond well to alternative treatments, others do not. Be careful and get guidance from credible mental health professionals, whether traditional, Western, Easter, or alternative.

[Romie]

I know people that work for a rather large pharmaceutical company. One of the unofficial company motto's is "We make treatments, not cures". According to them this mentality isn't unique to their current employer but is indicative of the corporate community as well.

 

That said, some medications can work for some people. For example, according to Wikipedia, SSRI's "are believed to increase the extracellular level of the neurotransmitter serotonin by inhibiting its reuptake into the presynaptic cell, increasing the level of serotonin in the synaptic cleft available to bind to the postsynaptic receptor." SSRI's are great if your depression is caused by a chemical imbalance. But if your depression is caused by other issues it's probably not going to do anything or possibly make things worse.

 

There is no "cure all" for mental unrest. Things like depression can be caused by many things. SSRI's won't help with your depression if it's caused by trauma, healing practices won't cure your depression if it's caused by diet, improved diet won't cure it if it's caused by a chemical imbalance, etc. Each person needs to sort themselves out and try to find why, if they can at all. Sometimes you just never know (or are afraid to let yourself know) and it just doesn't go away.

 

That was a wordy way of saying, I think it depends on the person.

 

SFJane? Holla! Her youtube videos introduced me to Taoism and meditation.

[henro]

A must read. . .

 

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/05/03/tips-to-avoiding-depression.aspx

[SeriesOfTubes]

While I would agree that meds have been a godsend for some people with severe persistent mental illness, who in other times would have simply been locked up in dungeons their entire lives, in terms of depression, the idea of a "seratonin deficiency" and "biochemical imbalance" are basically the products of highly lucrative marketing strategies that accompanied the release of Prozac in the early 90s, largely due to the appealing idea that depression is caused by a neurochemical imbalance which can be corrected with a drug. This ignores the fact that everything has a biochemical correlate. From what I have studied, it would appear that chemically adjusting people to depressing circumstances is what likely accounts for higher relapse rates associated with medication as compared with psychotherapy.

[Romie]

Ok, I'll bite.

 

Mercola: Just look at any of them and you will see they clearly state that the mechanism of action is unknown. As an example, from the package insert of Cymbalta: "Although the exact mechanisms of the antidepressant, central pain inhibitory and anxiolytic actions of duloxetine in humans are unknown, these actions are believed to be related to its potentiation of serotonergic and noradrenergic activity in the CNS."

 

 

When you test on an animal, you can cut it open and look at its brain. Not so much with humans. The statement comes down to testing and what companies are allowed to do. They get an effect in an animal, they theorize it happens in people. This is why animal testing leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to human medicine.

 

It's possibly just something that's been fed to my aforementioned cohorts to keep them compliant, but in the past they had made it sound like there are physical conditions that lead to low serotonin levels. Mayhaps the wool hath been pulled o'er mine eyes.

 

I trust Mercola as much as I trust big pharma, frankly. While a great portion of the information there is useful, the sites main purpose seems to be using that information as fear tactics to advertise the goods and services offered by that site. Hence why I trust blogs (like Jane's or "Beyond Meds") more.

[styx_oarsman]

When it comes to serious mental illnesses (schizophrenia and such), medications are often the only thing that can keep the illness under control. They may have side effects but without them the patient won't be able to get out of the state of acute psychosis... A friend of mine suffered from some form of schizophrenia and he tried to "cure" himself using Soto Zen meditation (he was aware that he had "a problem", but he didn't know it was a psychosis). From what I could see, it only made the thing worse. Eventually, he suffered a breakdown and ended up in hospital. The medications got him back on his feet... But it's a complicated subject; it's often difficult to find just the right combination of medicaments for the patient and doctors themselves are sometimes in the dark. I think however, that alternative medicine or qigong etc, could be very useful after the critical phase of the illness is gone.

[Owledge]

It seems logical to me why antidepressants can cause violent behavior like people running amok in a school. Depression is a symptom of a seemingly unsolvable situation. You can either sit it out and save your energy (depression) or try to break through by brute force (violence). Antidepressants, as the name says, prevent your brain from following the former strategy, so the only one left is the latter.

 

I mean, just imagine a school child being harassed by bullies. Eventually, that child will isolate from the others, trying to evade the bullying. But now imagine that the bullies were following the child and also dragging him/her back into an 'audience', thus completely removing the option of isolation. I think, sooner or later, that child would become more violent than the bullies could ever imagine.

 

Haha, I'm reminded of that scene from South Park where Eric Cartman kills someone's parents and secretly feeds them to him. That's a metaphor for what I mean. (And if you say Cartman is not the helpless victim, but actually quite repulsive, think again: Single mother household, fulfilling him every wish, he's fat et.al. ... recipe for social trouble - him being mean appears to be a defense mechanism.)

[Jetsun]

The issue with meds is that many companies try to market them as a cure for psychiatric problems and for a long time many within the psychiatric community thought they could be a cure but it's slowly being realised that they aren't because they treat the symptom of a persons problems rather than get to the root. Treating the symptom can sometimes even prevent you getting to the cause so in some circumstances meds can actually prevent a cure. But also in some circumstances meds help a person get stabilised so they can function better in society which can enable them to make other choices and get their emotional needs met which can lead to a recovery.

 

Whether Taoists methods and oriental medicine are a better option is something I looked into myself for a long time and in my opinion for a lot of people they wont help, although for some they will help as part of a holistic treatment by creating enough relaxation and grounding for the nervous system to let go of stress, but most of those methods are meant for healing on a different level and by using such methods you can stimulate powerful energies within the unbalanced person which can lead to overwhelm and making things worse.

 

Certainly meditation based methods and anything head based can just make things worse. During my own period of bad mental health I would try such methods and stimulate all those energies within my body then afterwards I could barely leave the house or even speak to my own family because of feelings of overwhelm. In a normal healthy person when they encounter strong energies and emotions they can usually remain detached enough and remain in the witness enough for them to be processed and let go, but with a mentally ill person that is very difficult. SF jane said she basically had to be prepared for her symptoms to get much worse before they got better as she worked through the heavy stuff, which is risky and not possible for a lot of people.