A loved one of mine was prescribed psychotropic drugs for various abnormalities.

They really did work to bring about positive changes in behavior but after a few years the patient expressed a desire to go with out the drugs, so against the advice of the doctor they did so and they were able to adjust accordingly with no ill effects.

I wonder how many just stay on the prescriptions for ever not realizing that they don't need them any more?

I agree that the drugs you've mentioned have their place, but it seems that they are WAY over-prescribed; but then, that's pretty much typical in this country, right? Instant results with a pill and let's worry about the long-term results later...

I believe they should be used as a last-resort item, given the potential side-effects. Let's try nutritional support (the post on The Erotic Hwy. board re: fish oil is germane); therapy (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in particular) can give good results when used as a short-term intense program to modify the behavior that intensifies and enables depression; and support groups (whatever group structure that fits the individual and helps them get through the black abyss).

I say this as one who has fought a lifetime of depression and only in the last few years got to the point where I was able to get a handle on the issues. The above combination (along with 19+ years of focusing on my health via exercise, nutrition and rational supplementation) has gotten me through the black void to a place where I'm feeling reasonably good about my life.

I can handle the struggle, stay productive and NOT have to do additional battle with the potential side-effects. Onward and upward --

ALL medications are overprescribed today. And the choices are often not made on sound information...

but on how much the drug makers advertise their products, persuading consumers to ask for specific drugs, and on how much the drug makers promote their drugs with doctors and hospitals.

Many older medications are very efficient, much safer, have proven track records, lesser side effects and COST less.  But the drug companies need to get their newer products sold to offset R&D costs and make profits.

I believe the populace of this country is hugely overmedicated. Rather than solve the root cause of a problem, doctors just throw drugs at the symptoms.

Except for the ocassional illegal substance or the much more than ocassional alcohol use (abuse), I rarely take so much as an aspirin.

I can't prove cause and effect, but I haven't been sick more than once a decade since my childhood years, and I never use drugs. I will confess to ocassionally abusing them however. lol

Some people need them and they are necessary to live a basic life others simply want them because they are weak with their own emotions and they will never have a life.If they weren't overprescribed, Hawaii tourism would be down dramatically.

are over-prescribed, some of those needing them most, find taking them the most aversive, and hence refuse to take them; like those with bi-polar disorder, various thought disorders, and addictions. Anti-depressants, ant-anxiety, and ADD medications are way over prescribed. People even take way too many things, we take for granted to be safe, like analgesics and antacids over the counter, for their own good. I once knew a guy, a well known author, who had to be hospitalized for depression, because his addiction to coffee and Sudafed could no longer get him through his work day, nor keep him connected to his family and friends. Substance addictions are just forms of self-medicating.

I know a woman who has PTSD and pursuant anxiety and phobic disorders that are pretty debilitating.

Early on neuropsychiatrist -- and a world-famous one at that -- prescribed her three drugs at once. An antidepressant, a tranquilizer, and a drug for neural pain.  The drugs did her no good, and she can't remember the two years of her life that she was on them. During that time all therapy was of course useless.

This world-famous neuropsychiatrist was extra special competent though; because he told the woman's husband that all she really needed was for him to smack her around a little. (I ain't shitting you.) He told hubby this right in front of the wife. That's when he was replaced.

This lady's therapist at the time; a PhD in psychology of course, knew exactly how to treat such disorders. He assigned her a book on the Holocaust to read, complete with graphic details. The good news is that in the aftermath she was too fucked up to make it back to any appointments with him because she couldn't leave her home for several weeks.

But that's nothing. Even though she had serious PTSD from trauma, psychologists and mental health social workers/therapists managed to misdiagnose her with "depression" for 15 years.

I knew another woman (now deceased) who was a college professor and had post-partum depression. The doctors INSISTED that she be left with the children. (Important for her therapy, they said.) And, because they were such experts, they put her on thorazine (usually used for schizos), a tricyclic antidepressant and a couple of other things I don't recall. It worked really well though because she smothered one of her kids to death and set the house on fire with another confined to a playpen. An older one escaped to get help and the one in the playpen was saved by a neighbor who sustained serious burns.

When her husband sued for divorce and to have custody of the remaining children; one of these psychiatric experts showed up and testified that she should have full custody. Good thing the judge had more common sense.

The little boy was rather traumatized by this and drew inward. The psychologist who saw him decided he was "ineducably mentally retarded" and that he should be put in a home for severely autistic children. The father disagreed and sent the kid to run and play on a farm for a couple of years with no formal schooling at all, after which he did perfectly fine and completed his first PhD before age 18.

When he first returned to school, because he was so bright, this was naturally diagnosed by the school psychologist as a mental disorder requiring medications -- which the father, having properly grown distrustful of psychobabblers, refused to do.