Ah--it's not so cut and dry anymore. The Psychiatry profession, along with the drug companies are trying to climb out of a deep hole of bad science. The standard chemical treatment protocol is an art. There are no hard and fast truths in Psychiatry anymore.

Efficacy of drugs used to treat seriously ill Clinically Depressed patients; slightly better than placebo, and that might be stretching the data?

Drugs used to treat anxiety; the one's that work, for awhile, are addictive.

It seems like every few months, a researcher is questioning "best addressed chemically" approach. This month is long term use of antipsychotics on Schizophrenics: maybe these drugs affect the long term quality of life?

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag...

> This month is long term use of antipsychotics on Schizophrenics: maybe these drugs affect the long term quality of life?

So does untreated schizophrenia.

Of course. The question isn't "do we stop treating schizophrenia", it's "should we, and how can we, transition the patient off of drugs that are potentially harmful in the long term".

We've known for a long time that anti-psychotic medication is pretty horrible. That's why groups like Hearing Voices Network have been campaigning to educate clinicians and people who hear voices about different causes and different treatment options. There are other groups that campaign against purely medical models of treatment for other illnesses.

A well known tension in mental health treatment teams is between the psychiatrist (who stereotypically will want to medicate everyone) and the psychologists (who stereotypically will want to talk to everyone).

http://www.hearing-voices.org/

That's probably right. I regrettably never paid attention to the difference