Psych Medications - Do We Really Need Them?

According to statistics, 1 out of 5 people are nowadays suffering from anxiety, bipolar disorder, depression, schizophrenia, manic depression and so forth.

Dear reader, please note that these are my personal opinions and concerns and if you have a serious condition of mental health issues, you definitely need to seek professional help.

This is my concern: have we perhaps become a nation of hypocondriacs, where at the slightest sign of depression we go to see the doctor and ask for a medication to fight it. Our doctors prescribe all sorts of medications in the belief that it is the solution to every problem.

I reside very close to a mental institution. Every day I see droves of patients walking the streets in a zombie like trance, overly medicated and disoriented. This fact alone makes me wonder about the effectiveness of the psych medications. How is overmedicating these patients helping them? the poor souls don't know whether they are coming or going. They are confined in the hospital and some for years and constantly given big dosages of medicines, in the hope that they will come back to normality.

Of course there are genuine cases where psych medications save people's lives and help people who have gone to the brink. My article is not against these medications, but in the overly usage of them and their prescription at the slightest sign of depression.

The essence of the matter is this. Do we constantly expect to be happy and joyful? is that what life is all about? have we become such an anti-social society where we can't even get to have a heart to heart conversations with our friends, where we can't get the needed moral support from our family and friends? Do we actually have to pay a psychiatrist or a counsellor to tell them about something that is deeply disturbing us? Why do we need thousands of helplines to tell some total stranger our deepest of worries?

What ever happened to the good old days when we got together with friends and came out in the open and told them about something that was worrying us. Nowadays we have alternated it with group therapies where we meet a group of strangers and talk about ourselves.

Alcohol consumption, drug usage and gambling have increased to epidemic proportions. And that in a society that has got almost everything to provide all sorts of material comfort. Where have we gone wrong?

Have we started to expect too much out of life. We are constantly surrounding ourselves with material goods and still suffer from feelings of depression, isolation and loneliness.

We witness families whose members are working two jobs each to pay for the bills, mortgage and loans. These family members hardly see each other or have the time to sit down together and have a meaningful conversation or have a quality time together. We have to make plans weeks beforehand to bring the whole family together to have a meal or spend some time together. Do we ever look around and think : what is happening to our society? why have we become so materially focused that we have lost sight of things that really matter in life.

Medications - Are They The Only Solution?

The amount of medication prescribed by the doctors every day is a source of worry. Just look into your medication cabinet and start counting how many medications are you prescribed every month for ailments that would be laughed at in a third world country. I've never heard of a starving child in Africa complaining of depression. It seems the more the material abundance, the more psychological problems we have. We are constantly looking for ways to fill up the void inside us and when we fail to fill it up with material goods we start to suffer from depression and anxiety. We stopped enjoying the simple little things in life and started to worry about how unhappy we are each day.

What seems to be the solution?

I'm as baffled about the solution as the next person. But I firmly believe in one thing: bring back the old values of family, friendships and relationships. Go out there and start making real friends with real people and stop living this agrophobic life of socialising on networks and making friends with total strangers who hide behind computers. Throw yourselves out into the parks and beaches and live life to the full , instead of spending hours on the computers. Start enjoying the simple things in life, like that flower you planted last season, make a trip to the supermarket the biggest outing you've had, stop comparing yourself with others and how much more they've got, start to count your blessings and look at the brighter side of life. Maybe then we can stop consuming so many medications and maybe then we can accept that we are all humans and death, tears, grief and sadness are just part of life and they are the natural stages of life. Stop expecting to be happy every day, happiness comes from being contented with what you've got and making the best out of what you've got. And maybe listening to the words of our biggest prophet and saviour might help when he said : " You should be glad when you've got food, clothes and shelter". Sometimes, we fail to see all the good things we've got in our lives and concentrate on the negatives in our lives. "Counting our blessings every day will keep the doctor away".