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Originally Posted by Flames Draft Watcher
I'd be extremely wary about prescription drugs. Big pharmaceutical has a lot of money to push drugs through the FDA and market these drugs to doctors. The system is somewhat corrupt. Lots of these drugs alleviate certain symptoms while at the same time producing very harmful effects. Atypical anti-psychotics sound particularly scary
Just did a course on Madness and Sanity in society and the history of psychiatry is not pretty at all. Lots of treatments were approved because they made patients more manageable, not because they helped the patients. The names of mental illnesses have changed many times over in the past few hundred years and their supposed "causes" have changed many times as well.
Drugs would be a last resort IMO. I'd explore counselling and try and exhaust that route first. Some of these prescription drugs have very, very nasty "side-effects" and can be dangerous to go off of after you've been on them for a while.
Trusting psychiatrists blindly less than one hundred years could have resulted in a lobotomy, or sexual sterilization. Electo-shock therapy still goes on today. We really haven't come as far in understanding mental illness as most would think, its a lot of guesswork, and a lot of direct experimentation on people through the use of drug cocktails.
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I strongly disagree with this post. Today's drugs have to undergo rigourous testing and scrutiny before being approved for medical use. An SSRI, like Lexapro, or an SNRI, like Cymbalta, can give you that extra safeguard to prevent stress or stop an anxiety attack in its tracks. All they do is increase the amounts of chemicals, like seritonin, which are depleted through anxiety attacks.
Side effects can be a bit nasty for the first week or so, insomnia, dry mouth, increased sweating etc..., but they should go and you should be feeling better after 1-2 weeks. If the meds don't work, switch to another type. Everyone's body chemistry is different and the same meds won't work for everyone.