You meant American, because in the UK the front-line treatment for depression or anxiety is a talking therapy, coupled with social prescribing (which to be fair has variable availability), and then medication if indicated.

OP talks about a long term prescription for clonazepam, and current advice is that long term benzo use must be avoided.

It's the front-line treatment for mild depression and mild-to-moderate anxiety, because of the poor evidence for the efficacy of antidepressant medicines for patients with less severe illness. SSRIs and talking therapies are recommended equally for moderate or severe depression and severe anxiety, because the evidence suggests that they are equally effective.

NICE guidance states that benzodiazepines should not be prescribed for more than two weeks, because of diminishing efficacy and the risk of dependence.

SSRIs are cheaper and more convenient than psychotherapy, which should not be underestimated. The NHS certainly can't afford to offer psychotherapy to everyone who could benefit and many Americans don't have adequate insurance coverage. Getting psychotherapy outside of office hours can often be a significant challenge, which is a total dealbreaker for many people. I would certainly like to see greater use of psychotherapy (particularly for people with chronic and/or severe disorders), but there's nothing innately wrong with the widespread use of a safe and effective class of drugs. There just isn't any evidence to suggest that SSRIs are inferior to psychotherapy, although it may be the case that some patients who do not benefit from SSRIs would benefit from psychotherapy (and vice-versa).

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg90/chapter/1-Guidance#ste...

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg113/chapter/1-Guidance#st...

I think there are very definitely market forces at work, keeping people in the mindset that pharmaceuticals are the only 'real' effective solution to their ills - when so, so many other alternatives are available. I don't doubt that chemicals can make peoples lives happier - I see it all the time.

What I resist, however, is the notion that individuals should subjugate themselves to collective will just because everyone says pharmaceuticals are the way. Maybe strengthening ones resistance to groupthink and collective-derived thought processes is also an effective way to strengthen ones mental health .. alas, this point of view is too often overwhelmed by the very mob it serves to service, however ...

What I'm getting from this is you have a specific agenda against "group think and collective-derived thought processes" and are being purposefully vague, as demonstrated with "...".

What is your alternative? You seem to have one in mind.

Case in point: The West's mental health addiction problem. It isn't getting better because of pharmaceutical treatment: its getting worse.

Do you mean a over reliance on antidepressants for treatment?

My only point is, don't just blindly accept pharmaceutical dependence without at least considering the alternatives. Pharmaceutical addiction is no benign thing - addiction and dependency is a key factor in the profit motives of the military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex. Before you fall for their traps, be sure you've considered the alternative.

Accepting ones own personal responsibility is a requirement for a healthy mental condition; leaving the responsibility for ones mental health to other agencies and denying ones own agency - well, this is the very definition of mentally un-well.

Educate yourself before you fall into this scenario, is what I'm saying. Sure, if you're so mentally un-well that you can't care for yourself, you're going to need help - but too many times, that help turns to betrayal when one problem (mental illness) gets supplanted with another (pharmaceutical addiction).

There are no silver bullets to mental illness - not even the ones that come in a nicely packaged pill container.

We do not have the handle on mental illness that we think we do.

So no, just assuming "because everyone else is doing it" is not a good enough reason, imho, to put oneself in the position of addiction to pharmaceutical products. Take personal responsibility, and consider the alternatives before one becomes pharmaceutically dependent in order to maintain a 'healthy life'. This is a mine-field, and is by no means a settled issue in our current culture.

Agreed!!

> I just want there to be an awareness that all therapies aren't created equal, and people could be lead some bad places depending on how poorly educated they become. After all, people still use alcohol to cope with mental health. Who knows what ridiculous notions someone could come up with given enough ingenuity and misinformation?

Unfortunately in my experience, the level of education doesn't help. I've known medical doctors that know exactly the risks involved yet still make poor choices because they haven't resolved the underlying issues. Medical doctors can be good at treating other people, but very bad at "treating" themselves and family.

So the best answer I can come up with is, who cares if someone wants to use alcohol (or heroine, etc.) to get relief as long as it's not causing anyone else physical or mental harm, recognition by that individual that its a crutch therefore temporary, and a focus in resolving the real issues.

And that's really why you need a medical doctor taking the edge off your symptoms and therapist who helps you deal with the underlying issues themselves. Medicating and go is a terrible, terrible idea.