Posted by Iansf on July 19, 2005, at 0:39:27
In reply to Re: Dr. Breggin on Tom Cruise, ritalin and psychia » laurenjb, posted by Racer on July 18, 2005, at 14:05:49
I'm curious to know if you've actually been helped by psychotherapy. I certainly haven't been. I went to a string of psychotherapists with different methodologies over a period of more than 20 years and found no relief at all from my depression. On the other hand, four weeks after starting Prozac I discovered for the first time in my life what it meant to genuinely feel happy. Even though antidepressants have annoying side effects, I'll take them any day over psychotherapy, including cognitive therapy, because in my experience psychotherapy is virtually useless in treating serious mood disorders. As for using "will power" as Tom Cruise recommends, I've never known anyone to conquer a serious mood disorder with will power - in fact, people often end up feeling worse because they blame themselves (and often others blame them too) for not having sufficient will power. And vitamins? Well, if you go to the Psychobabble Alternatives board, you'll find people trying all sorts of vitamins and supplements, with minimal success. A few members report some relief with one supplemen or another (actually, usually a long list of supplements that ends up costing more than antidepressants), but most do not. My guess is that Tom Cruise has never experienced serious long-term depression or bi-polar disorder and consequently has no knowledge at all what it takes to overcome it. He's just spouting what he's been taught, not speaking from experience. As the saying goes, walk a mile in my shoes before deciding you know what's best for me.
> AHA! You just pointed out part of my own amorphous discomfort with a lot of contemporary psychiatry: that the meds are offered IN PLACE OF psychotherapy, rather than as an ADJUNCT TO psychotherapy. I could start banging my shoe on the table, and clamber aboard my soapbox regarding the culture and the HMOs and so on that brought this whole system about, but I think we can just consider that most of us here agree on that matter and skip the fireworks.
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> Virtually everything I've read says that the optimal treatment for mood disorders includes psychotherapy, whatever the model used. The only thing I've ever read that didn't say that the optimal treatment for depression was a combination of meds and therapy was a study that found that many people with mild depression did just as well with therapy alone as they did with both therapy and meds. I've yet to find a single study showing that meds alone work as well as a combination of meds and therapy -- and I don't expect I ever will.
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> That said, it kinda feels to me that the anti-psychiatric meds folks are drawing a line in the sand that specifically EXcludes combinations of meds and therapy; arguing against medications as if medications are ALWAYS offered INSTEAD OF therapy, rather than in combination with therapy. Makes a more sensational argument, but not, I think, more believable.
poster:Iansf
thread:529095
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050718/msgs/529995.html