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Physiology & Medicine / Re: the truth about anti-depressants & anti-psychotics
« on: 12/06/2004 09:34:39 »
The problem is that the brain is horrendously complex - it amazes me that we have any drugs at all that can help with such illnesses without completely messing the patient up in different ways.
If you want to avoid side-effects from psychiatric medicine, best thing to do is to make sure your doc isn't prescribing you the latest fab new remedy: in fact, there has been next to no progress in drug design for many many years - the drug companies make their money by coming up with a new (very similar) drug and marketing it as "no known side-effects" - all side-effects not being known yet as they've only had small-scale trials :/ You're best off taking something where the side-effects (and there always will be a load) are well-understood and can therefore be closely monitored.
There are definitely people who benefit hugely from taking these drugs - people who could otherwise never live in the community are doing pretty well out there. They're also good for short-term use to get people back to a place from where they can get on with living. Certainly there are also people for whom psychological treatment is much more appropriate. This is why (in the UK anyway) mental health is handled by teams who can discuss what direction is best for any given patient.
Ack, long reply and not sure it actually answered your question :/
If you want to avoid side-effects from psychiatric medicine, best thing to do is to make sure your doc isn't prescribing you the latest fab new remedy: in fact, there has been next to no progress in drug design for many many years - the drug companies make their money by coming up with a new (very similar) drug and marketing it as "no known side-effects" - all side-effects not being known yet as they've only had small-scale trials :/ You're best off taking something where the side-effects (and there always will be a load) are well-understood and can therefore be closely monitored.
There are definitely people who benefit hugely from taking these drugs - people who could otherwise never live in the community are doing pretty well out there. They're also good for short-term use to get people back to a place from where they can get on with living. Certainly there are also people for whom psychological treatment is much more appropriate. This is why (in the UK anyway) mental health is handled by teams who can discuss what direction is best for any given patient.
Ack, long reply and not sure it actually answered your question :/