The Case for Psychiatric Treatment

Would you let an open, large, and painful wound that is oozing pus go without a trip to the doctor’s and a willingness to use the antibiotic (or other remedy) that she prescribes? Then why not at least try a pharmaceutical remedy for what is awry in your brain, causing mental health symptoms? 

To be sure, there ISN’T ANY perfect mental health pharmaceutical. Almost always, for example, several have to be tried before a workable solution is established by the psychiatrist and you in tandem–and it will probably have to be changed as there come down the research pipeline new treatments. 

Actually, there was a golden era of many decades after Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928 when antibiotics worked, until gram-negative bacteria started to evolve so that now many microbes are resistant, and, especially in hospitals, vanquishing no longer occurs. 

Just like working with mental health symptoms. Only, while the U. S. National Institute of Mental Health and its counterparts are trying to develop a taxonomy of the genetics that corresponds to various symptoms, essentially there are few clues let alone a road map. This inability to target a treatment to a mental health symptom is why lifestyle changes are so important. Your psychiatrist and mental health team should be treating the whole you. 

But the pharmaceutical or other biological remedy offered is worth your careful thought. I believe that I have walked a mile in your shoes. See if you really have a good reason to refuse trying meds towards making better your mental health symptoms. 

We will have “personalized psychiatry” according to our genetic makeup and various biological markers available someday. But, for now, the available treatments must be administered by trial-and-error.