Re:A psychiatrist thinks some patients are better off withou...
by duaneb on Saturday December 14, 2013 @05:45PM
(#6907434)
> My layman's impression is that the current generation of drugs for serious psychiatric diseases does more to help family and society in general to live with the patient, than to help the patient itself
That's exactly that—a layman's impression. Realistically this is very complex to evaluate. Personally, when I took my antipsychotic, I thought clearer. I stopped because there were physical side effects, but I still miss it.
As always, exercise caution when adopting new medication, and evaluate early and often whether it helps you address your needs.
However, I can't think of anything more harmful than denying patients medication that actually might help them. People have strong feelings about psychiatric drugs, and even more so when it's hard to quantifiably evaluate the beneficial effects. Add in that depression and anxiety have a practically infinite number of causes. The result is that it's very difficult to evaluate medications for a given patient without trying it, and there are a large number of failures before finding good medication.
That's exactly that—a layman's impression. Realistically this is very complex to evaluate. Personally, when I took my antipsychotic, I thought clearer. I stopped because there were physical side effects, but I still miss it.
As always, exercise caution when adopting new medication, and evaluate early and often whether it helps you address your needs.
However, I can't think of anything more harmful than denying patients medication that actually might help them. People have strong feelings about psychiatric drugs, and even more so when it's hard to quantifiably evaluate the beneficial effects. Add in that depression and anxiety have a practically infinite number of causes. The result is that it's very difficult to evaluate medications for a given patient without trying it, and there are a large number of failures before finding good medication.