Posted by chujoe on June 14, 2010, at 6:13:00
In reply to Re: Do AD's Help Prevent Future Depression?, posted by morganator on June 13, 2010, at 12:53:50
> One question we have to ask here is, "Are we doing everything in our power to help prevent another depressive episode while having some success on an antidepressant?" Or, "Do we just believe that an antidepressant alone is the only thing that can help us because our illness is purely biologically based."
>
> I guess what I am saying is that I believe we can do many things to set ourselves up and our lives up in a way that we can reduce the likeliness of having a major relapse that we can't seem to pull ourselves out of.
>This seems like a fundamental insight about the nature of psychoactive drugs. One has to give the drugs a chance -- the molecules don't just interact with our brains, they interact with our minds. O perhaps it's more accurate to say our minds interact with the molecules. This is a place Western science is very reluctant to go, I realize.
This is not the same as the placebo effect, either. It's not the belief that the drug will work that improves a person's illness, but the person's active support of the drug's effects.
Two caveats: 1) There are some mental conditions that are so severe the above does not apply. 2) One has to be careful not to adopt a "blame the patient" attitude, but the person taking psych drugs needs to be encouraged to make the sorts of choices that will work with the drug(s) to change the way he/she experiences the world.
poster:chujoe
thread:950522
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20100604/msgs/951012.html