I've worked in the mental health field for years and remember believing that a sense of purpose and good social support was more important than the medication and that the medication was not necessary and harmful. Knowing what I know now, there are some diseases, mostly those involving psychosis e.g. schizophrenia, where med adherence is vital to a person learning how to cope with their disease otherwise they can't function and it is certainly not a character failing.

I haven't read the book in this piece and not to knock on journalists but there are things about mental illness you just won't learn without exposure to it and actually working to help people recover. There is a massive problem with over prescription and this idea that mental illness can be 'cured' with medications and medications alone which is absolute flummery (but if you look at what medications bring in the most revenue, the fact this persists shouldn't surprise you).

Biggest take away is that you shouldn't view drugs as necessarily bad as this piece implies. They aren't. When you have a patient who is so depressed they can't get out of bed or another whose auditory hallucinations intensify to the point of violence the drugs are necessary but they aren't a cure. Getting over mental illness requires social support but it does at times also require psychotropic meds.

And don't get me started on the bullshit pushed by pharma a few years ago that people in pain can't get addicted to opiates. I loose it almost every time.