On the SSRI Debate: DOES it boil down to Good versus Evil?
There is no panacea. Every choice we make comes with its own set of compromises. I don’t advocate for drug therapy, but have seen thousands of instances that support the efficacy of it.
Bottom line, we have to be cautious about throwing the baby out with the bathwater, when societal violence erupts. There are plenty of teens who perform heinous acts against humanity, torture stray animals, beat their girlfriends, etc.~ and they’ve never taken an SSRI (thought by some to cause these horrific acts), nor have they been on any other type of drug intervention.
If you brutally beat a puppy, it will grow up to be a frightened, distrustful and aggressive dog. The same happens with human children.
Volatile and violent acting-out behaviors are indicative of people raised without adequate nurturant supplies. NO amount of drug therapy is gonna alter this severely damaged person’s temperament or emotional profile.
It’s a normal, human reflex to want answers. Some people in light of an enormously unsettling and upsetting event, obsess about “what could possibly have caused this?!” Still, we must resist jumping to conclusions, simply because they seem viable and logical in the midst of our grief and dismay.
Drug therapy saved my life when I was suicidally depressed at 20. I was fortunate to have landed in the home office of a brilliant psychiatrist (there are very few), who knew precisely how to balance my brain chemistry, so I could ‘hold’ the work we did, and make good use of it. I was released from treatment after 10.5 months (a small miracle).
Had things gone a different way, I would not be writing this to you, and nobody in the world would ever have heard of me.
Psychopharmaceuticals have their place and purpose. Most people are over-prescribed, where a micro or mini-dose along with meaningful and effective therapeutic care, would likely have been far more effective. In the world of psychopharmacology, LESS is very often, more.
It takes a highly skilled, well-experienced doctor of psychiatry to ‘get it right’ on the first try. Many are not so gifted, and in My 30 years of experience, most working in that field should never have gotten licensed to practice medicine…
so perhaps we should be less inclined to blame the drug, than the one prescribing it.