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Comment by alleychnt | Hacker News Reader

Show me a guy on psych meds who is doing great and I'll believe you.

o/ heya.

I've been on psychiatrist-prescribed meds for a little over two years now. I've gotten a better job, my salary has increased by 52%, I live with less stress, I have a (mostly) tidy home, I am no longer dependent on alcohol, I care for a wonderful dog, I am cultivating healthy relationships and friendships, and I am more involved in my community.

I've also been seeing a cognitive-behavioral therapist for about three years to work through anxiety, depression, gender identity, and trauma from several childhood sexual assaults.

But maybe I don't count, because I'm not a 'guy' :) but I'm doing absolutely fucking amazing, thank you very much.

and as soon as you go off the meds?

What does that have to do with anything? Some conditions are incurable, only treatable.

WTF does this mean?

If you go off your HIV meds you get AIDS and die. If you stay on your HIV meds you have a life expectancy is similar to someone who does not have the virus. (1)

Do you then conclude HIV meds are bad? Or HIV patients need to just suck it up?

(1) http://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/04/why-id-rather-have-hiv-th...

I think he is implying that if he went off the meds, his life wouldnt go to the can: that the effect can be explained by the placebo effect.

I've learned coping skills to help me deal with what I take the meds for - coping skills that I could not practice / get good at while I was not being treated. I'm not as good as I am when I'm on them, but I'm a whole lot better than I used to be. (How do I know? I take regular doctor-sanctioned drug holidays. Luckily the meds I take do not need to be tapered.)

But you don't really care about that. Or any valid piece of evidence that disputes your already-formed opinion.

I used to be really against psychiatry too. Had docs in high school that didn't ask the right questions. Got misdiagnosed. Spent my 20s a shambling (semi-functional, but shambling) mess.

I'm privileged that I'm able to afford my mental healthcare team (neither of them take insurance). I wish access to quality mental health professionals was more easy to obtain. It's a double edged sword- the practice has a hard time recruiting, and health insurance is often pretty terrible for it. So many people who would benefit from a mental health provider cannot / will not get it.

Your question only highlights your ignorance. For the vast majority of meds, they should be used in conjunction with therapy to resolve the underlying problem. The meds are not (always) a cure, but rather a treatment of symptoms to make the cure easier to achieve.

"You're nearsighted. You need glasses."

"But as soon as I take off the glasses...?"

There are more invasive procedures that directly fix nearsightedness. Of course, they're riskier than glasses.

I'm on psych meds and doing great, been on them for AGES. When I went off them a decade ago I spiraled very far downwards which ended in short term disability. The disability. Back then I thought "oh I'm doing well, I don't need them anymore." Nope, I need them because they keep me well. Because of them I am able to hold down a job and take care of myself.

I don't understand the hostility here.

There are plenty of people who are doing very well on psych meds.

The field is probably a bit too 'medication' heavy, I'll grant you that, but perfect is, as they said, is the enemy of the good.

The important thing about a lot of psychiatric ailments is that people have effectively lost some mental resource that they require to "bootstrap their way" out of the problem. Like, depressed people are usually too depressed to manage to make it to their therapy appointments (which they agree help with their depression, but only if they go...) So just prescribing talk therapy won't do anything; the person can't manage to "take that medicine" correctly.

Psychiatric drugs are great in the same way crutches are great: they let you "take the weight off" the problem, so you can work on the other parts of it. SSRIs let depressed people make it to their CBT therapy appointments. ADHD medications let unmotivated people get a job doing something they're passionate about. Anxiolytics let people make friends to attend social gatherings with. Etc.

I have mild clinical depression and have started taking a low dose of Lexapro about half a year ago. The difference in my baseline mood is palpable, and I'm feeling a lot better than previously. Sometimes on my walk home I'll event lightheartedly chant "happy pills, happy pills" to myself a couple of times, because the baseline difference is that noticeable.

"Show me a person with a pacemaker and I'll believe you."

"Show me a guy in an iron lung and I'll believe you."

Sometimes, unfortunately, the best outcome of treatment is simply to keep things tolerably bad.

(y)

I have taken a stable dose of lithium tricarbonate for many, many, many moons (my whole adult life really, 15+ years) now. I have to have quarterly blood panels to know that my actual levels haven't fluctuated, but otherwise it really fixed me up.

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