Drugs don’t lead to sustainable alleviation of mental disorders, as the psychologists Prof Dr Jürgen Margraf and Prof Dr Silvia Schneider claim in a commentary published in “EMBO Molecular Medicine”. The researchers from Ruhr-Universität Bochum have compiled numerous studies that question the long-term effectiveness of psychotropic drugs; some even document negative effects after prolonged application. Psychotherapies, on the other hand, are effective in the long-term. The authors postulate that it is necessary to interlink the research into the biological, psychological and social factors, rather than reduce mental diseases to biological causes alone.
Clearly. But the title seems a bit sensational to me, when taking into account what these people actually claim. When it comes to schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, their claims are pretty modest: medication seems to offer no sustainable alleviation of symptoms, i.e., once treatment with medication is stopped, the benefits of the medication also seem to disappear. Whereas they claim that psychotherapy’s benefits outlast the duration of treatment, which warrants the claim that it offers more sustainable benefits when compared to medication. The more radical claims are made with respect to ADHD.
That may be true but research has shown that the effects tend not to be permanent,and that the effects of therapies like CBT tend to be overstated (as ,to be fair, does the effects of medication). Top ups of therapy are needed.
I have a feeling that those with schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders who get medication and therapy do better than those who just get one or the other.
What we need is more research in working more closely together. Are mri scans that the brain repairs itself with talking therapies and meds in combination not separately.
This is a subjective thing. 18 months of Nausea, Dizziness, Tremors, Restlessness while being unable to move (or meds) broke me. I was demoralized & defeated. So I told my pDoc that I would try anything else. And I did & discovered what works for Me. I am grateful that all the professionals that have tried to help me have been open to my ideas & candor and not just dismissed & “handled” me.
There was a young guy in the psych Hospital who was definitely over medicated.
He was on like 10mg of Haldol - Depakote - Seroquel - Risperdal a benzo etc…
I really felt bad for him, he could hardly walk.
I recently heard that the sugar industry falsely blamed heart disease on saturated fat rather than their products. I don’t question that sugar is bad in a major way for people and that there is way too much of it in most of our food products. But I sorta wonder if the companies that like to put saturated fat in their products came up with that report since people have been more sugar conscious lately. Always question the source of your information.
I think the idea that they can’t alleviate symptoms is a gross fallacy. They do for some. If one is arguing that symptoms may come back if the medication is stopped then that is true.
The same though could be said for headache medication… You take it to relieve a headache. It goes and you stop. At some point you’ll get another headache. Does this mean you should stop taking headache meds because they don’t permanently stop headaches occurring?
Same goes for a lot of other medication it relieves symptoms so long as the medication is taken. Do we reject all meds on those grounds or is it just psychiatric meds?
There’s a move in some quarters to give them those prescription pads. Some argue that anyone could do the psychiatrists’ job of writing out prescriptions, and that therefore psychiatrists are not needed.
My sister is a Cognitive Psychologist and a Doctor, never went to Medical school. She’s more of a Brain scanning Scientist then a Therapist though. Anyone who goes to College for that long has Earned the Title I think.
You gotta go to Med School to prescribe Meds is a Good System, I think.
I’ll be Honest.
Antipsychotics work best for me during a psychotic break.
But they kind of make things worse for me by increasing my anxiety and paranoia - agitation when I take them as maintenance.
