Drug Therapy: Does The Easiest Mean The Best?

From a conversation with a psychiatrist one typically gets the impression that the medications are the most powerful tool for treating mental disorders. Yes, you can try therapy, or lifestyle modifications, but if you are dealing with anything serious, the drug treatment is the only thing that has the real power to help.

At least partly, this conviction is based on the practical difficulty to use alternative treatments. For example, good psychotherapy exists but is hard to find and expensive; life style is possible to modify, but it requires significant time and energy invested into patient education and follow-up. Some patients cannot use these treatments even if they want to, because their mental disturbances result in the inability to understand and follow complex directions. The lifestyle modifications may be unattainable for economic or social reasons: someone whose entire family of nine lives in a one-bedroom apartment might want to modify his lifestyle, but be unable to do so.

A pill is certainly the easiest means of treatment, whether or not the most helpful. It can be used in any circumstances and by people of any economic, educational or social background. It is therefore true that medication therapy may be usable in cases when other types of treatment may not; however, any further implications about efficacy are much harder to prove.