Challenging the Efficacy of Psychiatric Drugs

Psychiatry is a medical field that deals with the diagnoses, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. The FDA is constantly approving drugs for psychiatrists to use that are supposed to help with in their practice. For example, Michael Levin-Epstein, who wrote the article “A New Way to Deliver Psychiatric Meds: Drugs for ADHD and Major Depression Now Can Be Delivered with Skin Patches,” shows how pharmacotherapy is continually being advanced by new ideas and approaches. However, Psychiatric drugs are not always the answer. Prescriptions are not a good remedy when it comes to the overcoming of a mental illnesses, because there is not enough information regarding the effects of the drugs, pharmaceutical companies are driven by profits,

The basis of of why one can not put faith in the solution of pharmaceutical drugs has to do with the fact that there is not enough information concerning the repercussions of psychiatric drugs; which in turn, has to do with the fact that the brain is the most complex part of the human body. One has to understand how the brain works completely in order to know the effects psychiatric drugs will have; medical practitioners do not know enough about the brain yet. This is why Joel Paris, a professor of psychiatry at McGill University, writes in his book “Use and Misuse of Psychiatric Drugs: An Evidence Based-Critique” how due to the fact medical practitioners are still learning about the brain and how it works, one can not know how the brain is going to react completely to the medications (11-12). Because of this, Joel states, “Psychiatrists like to believe that the drugs they prescribe have precise, scientifically proven effects on the brain. But the fact is that while we understand what these agents can do, we do not know how they work” (11). Still referring to the complexity of the brain, Joel further

For example, depression is something people will take medication for, but how can one really distinguish whether somebody is having a bad day, from being truly depressed. Even if a psychiatrist was able to tell the difference, it is still not a good idea that someone has to take a pill (or other means of medications) in order for one to not be depressed. Consequently, that person will become dependent on drugs instead of truly overcoming depression. Joanna Moncrieff, wrote the book “Myth of the Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric Drugs,” where she states, “It (power) has facilitated the particular form of social control that is embodied in psychiatric practice, by construing psychiatric restraint as the medical cure of a mental disease” (218). Just like Joanna writes, psychiatrists think that putting the person under restraint psychologically restraint is the remedy, but the fact is, all it does is temporarily puts a hold on the problem without fixing it. Joanna further states how people adopted this thinking that psychological problem result from a chemical imbalance