Posted by bassman on March 10, 2006, at 18:29:18
In reply to mixed bag, posted by med_empowered on March 10, 2006, at 17:49:50
I wish that I could go to a psychiatrist and say, "I've got panic disorder" and he'd say, "fine-look, I have several options that we can try...". It is more like, what ever is wrong with you, the pdoc says, "no, you should be taking Zoloft or..." Then you take his favorite med until it's obvious it doesn't work. I know a lot of people would disagree with me, but when it comes to the meds part, I've been much more satisfied with internists. They don't seem to have any favorite med, they are willing to give it the ol', "let's try this and that until it works..."-and then they aren't invested in you coming on a regular basis to beg for your prescriptions, which I think is inofitself a source of great anxiety.
I'm less convinced about therapy unless you get a really great therapist-and the chances of that are about the same as winning the lottery. Sure there are a lot of meds out there that have oodles of side effects and don't help very much-but it is the same thing with pain medications, anti-hypertensives, etc. I pinched a nerve in my back about a year ago and went through every pain killer that my ortho and intereist could think of. They didn't help the pain that much, but they sure made me dopey-so I ended up with a daily ice pack right where the nerve was pinched and daily yoga. That quickly did what the meds could not. If there were perfect meds, there would be only one in each class. Also there are certainly a lot of people that like to trivialize the emotional pain of anxiety and depression, so they say "no meds" when they mean "shake it off, wimp". My wish for such folks is for them to have serious depression and anxiety for just one month. They would become enlightened.
poster:bassman
thread:618505
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060310/msgs/618535.html