Tuesday, May 8, 2012

The Goal of Medication: Recovery Without Relapse


Medication today is doing more than ever to stabilize sufferers of mood disorders and help them to have happy, functional and productive lives. For a large number of those fortunate enough to successfully manage their symptoms with the help of medicine, the road to recovery has not been an easy one. For many it’s taken months (if not years) for them and their doctors to finally discover just the right combination of medicines to achieve the most favorable results with the least side effects. But all of the time, numerous adjustments and faithful trust they’ve placed in their medical support team has ultimately paid off. This is the great goal the patients, their companions and family members, and the physicians prescribing these medicines have all been working toward: ongoing stability and recovery without relapse.

This is an amazing achievement. Especially in light of all the possible obstacles we meet on the road to recovery that, if we’re not careful, can cause us and our loved one to take our eyes off our goal and lose sight of our direction. When this happens, we can needlessly delay if not entirely derail our rightful recovery.

Here are just a few of those obstacles and why it’s important to overcome them:


  • Some allege that the medicines doctors could prescribe for our loved one may cause diabetes or other life-threatening diseases so it’s safer not to take them. Such claims are almost always incorrect and bring about a much more life-threatening situation by inadequately treating a brain illness. This is a concern that must be discussed with the treating physician.
  • Psychiatry and psychotropic medicines are destructive to society and should be avoided if not banned altogether. These kinds of charges are usually from science-ignorant cults and have no basis in fact. The closest such critics have ever come to a psychiatrist has been as an actor playing one in a film or on TV. Again, consult your doctor with any concerns you may have. 
  • Patients who have taken medications in the past may have experienced unpleasant side effects and now refuse psychotropic drugs to treat their illnesses. This is unfortunate as well as short-sighted. New medications are being developed all the time; some do not produce previous negative side effects. Medicines that are now available may not have been around when the previous unpleasantness occurred. Every day is a new day in the world of medicine, and it’s useful and smart to keep all our options open. Try to help your loved one not to permit the past to overshadow decisions that are more wisely made in the present.

Medication isn’t the only treatment tool available to help a loved one recover from a brain illness, but it is a very important one. Many healthy and happy people are alive and in recovery today because of it.

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