Posted by bobman on June 20, 2010, at 14:16:51
In reply to Re: Rejection of Meds Gives me Hope » Conundrum, posted by chujoe on June 20, 2010, at 12:44:29
> I have a question for the anti-med folks here & I ask it in all sincerity because I would like to know & I'm trying to understand where you're coming from. I asked this on the social board, but nobody responded, so maybe no one is interested, but I'll try again here, since it is a question about medication.
>
> If you were diagnosed with lung or colon cancer & your oncologist told you that without treatment you had maybe a year to live, would you be willing to undergo chemotherapy, knowing, as your doctor would surely tell you, that the various drug "cocktails" used are toxic to your immune system and might not work or might leave you with permanent physical and mental deficits? And also knowing that the various combinations of drugs are often used in a trial and error manner to see which patient responds to which combination?
>
> I ask this, obviously, because I see an analogy between cancer drugs and psych drugs -- some are destructive for some people, some don't work, when used in combinations there is little clear clinical evidence on which to design the cocktail, etc. Still, using chemo & using psych drugs leads to remission in some patients.I think this is a stretch. The difference between cancer & its treatments, and mental illness, is that there is no empirical way of diagnosing a mental illness.
Here's a better comparison:
If you went into a doctor's office with a strong cough, enough so that you were coughing up blood, and the doctor decides, that based on your history of smoking and his observations, you have cancer, would you let him irradiate your lungs and pump you full of chemo?
If there was a diagnosable, biological root to my anxiety, and a corresponding treatment, I could evaluate the risks and benefits, and make a choice, much as I would do with cancer. Unfortunately nothing like this exists for mental illness, meaning that the medication you are prescribed is essentially faith-based medicine with a lot of side effects. That I wouldn't touch.
poster:bobman
thread:951199
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20100615/msgs/951614.html