How to Responsibly Consider Committing to Psychiatric Medication

Watching TV throughout the week, you can be inundated by pharmacological commercials. One for a recently identified condition, Tardive Dyskinesia, may pique your attention. What is TD?  Shaking and tremors that are the result of decades long use of antipsychotic medications. Such medications prescribed since the 1960s can cause TD, a condition potentially treatable by taking a supplemental medication.  Few, if any, longitudinal studies of the adverse effects of these drugs exist. It is only recently that we have begun to record the unforeseen effects of continued use of many psychiatric medications — from tremors to increased susceptibility to certain types of cancer. This begs an important question: are we giving enough consideration to the potential of decades-long use of medications, particularly in treating non-psychotic conditions such as mood disorders, OCD, and ADHD? Today, due in part to the constraints of managed care, primary care physicians and psychiatrists often prescribe psychiatric medications for a wide range of conditions and mood disorders. However, often depression and anxiety are the result of real-world pressures and an individual’s ability to deal with the social and individual issues in their lives. The biochemical basis of psychotic behaviors does not guarantee that all psychological conditions will benefit from pharmacological intervention. Pharmacology alters biochemistry of the brain, but we do not know what part biochemistry plays in man...
Source: World of Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Antipsychotic Medications Antipsychotics Pharmaceutical Advertising psychopharmaceuticals tardive dyskinesia Source Type: blogs