You've hit on some key issues, Rhythm. Mental health problems are complicated and take a lot of time and effort to combat, so medication becomes the go-to treatment due to certain constraints. As in your situation, you didn't really have any other options, but a big part of the over-prescription problem is that we've become lazy in our approach to mental health. We either want or need the fix that will be the quickest with the least amount of effort. My previous psychiatrist was so over-worked that he barely had more than twenty minutes to talk to you, and there's not much a doctor can do with such little time beyond handing out pills.
Also, we've gotten to the point of diagnosing every little experience that causes us to feel out of the norm. As you said, your feelings were legitmate for your experience, but psychiatrists have gone a bit overboard with diagnosing proper reactions to life situations as something that needs medical treatment just because they cause us to feel abnormal. I read an essay once in which the author was astonished to hear a woman proclaim that she would have never survived the grief she felt from her dog dying if she hadn't been prescribed Prozac.
The fallout from all of this is that medication has become stigmatized and causes people that could truly benefit from it to be hesitant. I know I wrote earlier about how I've often wondered what my life would be like had I not been prescribed meds when I was, but I thinking back, I was severely depressed. I had to do something to cope, and if I had to do it over again, I would take the medicine every time. Besides, I wasn't even prescribed medication until I had been institutionalized for my problems.
My point is, there are lots of issues with anti-depressants, but lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Also, we've gotten to the point of diagnosing every little experience that causes us to feel out of the norm. As you said, your feelings were legitmate for your experience, but psychiatrists have gone a bit overboard with diagnosing proper reactions to life situations as something that needs medical treatment just because they cause us to feel abnormal. I read an essay once in which the author was astonished to hear a woman proclaim that she would have never survived the grief she felt from her dog dying if she hadn't been prescribed Prozac.
The fallout from all of this is that medication has become stigmatized and causes people that could truly benefit from it to be hesitant. I know I wrote earlier about how I've often wondered what my life would be like had I not been prescribed meds when I was, but I thinking back, I was severely depressed. I had to do something to cope, and if I had to do it over again, I would take the medicine every time. Besides, I wasn't even prescribed medication until I had been institutionalized for my problems.
My point is, there are lots of issues with anti-depressants, but lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
