>it can be very hard for someone who is cognitively compromised to make an objectively good choice

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.

How do you suggest approaching educating yourself, if you innately distrust the best source of knowledge we have in regards to mental illness? If we don't have a handle on mental illness, what education can be gained? How can someone whose not educated in any of them weigh the pros and cons of CBT vs EMDR? And then we have the whole gamut of the absolutely pseudoscientific mental health world, of crystals, and demons, and just needing more vitamin d. I don't believe one approach is not as good as another.

I don't know if it was the intent by comparing "pro-plague" to anti-vaxxers, but please don't analogize anti-vaxxers with people's choice on mental health treatment. That's how we stigmatize mental health issues...

Yeah, I think "pro-plague" is the better term for the anti-vax, but I have no desire to stigmatize mental health. I absolutely believe that it should be discussed, and that people should feel safe. 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?

> I absolutely believe that it should be discussed, and that people should feel safe.

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.

There's enough depressed alcoholics in my family that I can't condone using alcohol to cope - self medicating like that is hard to titrate appropriately. The difficulty with options like heroine and alcohol is it's super hard to walk a line where you're not causing harm.

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.