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Comment by pugz | Hacker News Reader

I agree in general that prescription antidepressants are over-prescribed. Unfortunately there are few medications that can ameliorate shit life syndrome.

That said, some people do have genuine chemical imbalances. I've had bipolar disorder all my life. My cocktail of medications has allowed the last 11 years of my life to be the most productive, stable and happiest. There are of course side effects - and I can understand why some people find them intolerable. I have tremendous difficulty ejaculating, for example. But on balance it's worth it as a) I'm alive and b) my quality of life has improved.

Likewise for my grandmother, my mother, my aunt and my cousin. Bipolar disorder ravaged our families at various points and medication has improved our lives immeasurably in various ways. I just feel for earlier generations that didn't have an explanation (let alone cure) for their woes.

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The author wasn't discussing overprescription, they were talking about an apparently common impression that mental illness is different from something called a "chemical imbalance".

Their point was that neither someone for whom a little bit of adderall or antidepressants, nor someone like yourself for whom a full compliment of medications has helped is understood to simply have a "chemical imbalance", and certainly not one that's 1-to-1 corrected by drugs.

Instead, it's the case that through some medications many people with mental illnesses of varying severities are helped in coping with or reducing symptoms of their illness.

The point is that people "other" themselves from people with mental illnesses, telling themselves that it's just a chemical imbalance they're correcting. This change in many peoples' understanding of how therapy or their own brains works has unfortunately not reduced the stigma of mental illness, it's just something people have been telling themselves (as the authors studies show) to substitute for an admission that mental illness is ok and can be worked on.

I haven't read the article - am just about to - so this may be addressed in it, but:

I'd like to add that even if you do suffer from some aspect of SLS rather than crossed wires, medication can be key in enabling other forms of improvement.

Medication can be what enables you to seek other forms of therapy, what gives you enough energy to make it to the next appointment, what enables you to sort out other factors in your life, be it self esteem, socioeconomics, or relationships.

At least a few years back there was a pretty big sentiment against "happy pills" and medication, which I believe is harmful. That said, I don't believe solely in medication either, but want to maintain that it's an important tool that can serve either as a solution, or as the enabler of a solution.

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