I was a bit harsh toward the person I was quoting in my last post and I thank those who pointed this out. However, those kinds of posts still incense me because it shows a lack of understanding for what I deal with daily and have dealt with in my past.
As far as medication is concerned, I would agree that anti-depressants are definitely over-prescribed. People take them as happy pills and ignore the fact that the meds would be most effective when coupled with therapy and other forms of treatment. I don’t know a single person on Paxil or Zoloft that hasn’t also benefitted in some way (however small) from therapy. In my case, it took the edge off of the extreme mood swings and depressive episodes so that I could deal with some issues (self-esteem, deaths of people I knew in high school, the sexual harassment,…) in psychotherapy. I was blessed to have a wonderful Christian woman as a psychotherapist and I remember praying with her on occasion. It *does* take two to three weeks for the meds to work; but it is a marked change when they do.
This person also commented on the fact that most of these drugs are tested on animals (as most research is — there are some similarities in physiological chemistry and there is at least some similarity in anatomy with mammals) and we go on the basis that it works in the brains of those animals. As we can’t do experiments on humans for many of these drugs, we’re having to trust that there is a connection. There’s also the fact that some medications may work better for some people than they do for others and there are quite a few new drugs on the market these days, so many doctors have a choice of what they use or what combination they use.
As far as the assertion that the drugs really only treat symptoms, that’s really what most medications do anyway. Colds are viruses so taking a Coridicin tablet isn’t going to make the cold go away but it lessens the impact of the symptoms so that people feel functional again. In the case of depression, the symptoms of it can be so debilitating that people can’t get out of bed. I know that my Xanax wasn’t a cure — it treated my insomnia, which enabled me to get more sleep and get into a better sleep pattern, which in turn helped my body to start regulating my seretonin levels again. Serzone *is* seretonin and norepinephrine (a neurotransmitter) and the extra seretonin as well as a delivery system for it helped to correct the imbalance that they perceived me to have. Medicine is not an exact science in the least and there is quite a bit of guesswork involved in much of it. You have to go on what has been proven to work in the past, which is why doctors tend to prescribe certain antibiotics for certain infections — they’ve seen enough cases where it has worked positively in other people. I *know* that I’m not cured of my depression — I *still* have some hard times and some hard days; but another part of my treatment was learning some coping skills for dealing with those days. Making sure I’m eating, sleeping, and getting exercise are all things I do to control the depressive episodes and I’ve only had one really awful one in the last two years. I also do *try* to maintain constant spiritual disciplines because those help immensely — prayer is calming and does much good when I am in a depressive state.
Lastly, this person claims to have “spent many hours reading case studies, pouring over counseling books, examining secular teachings on depression and sputtering over the nonsense that many popular Christian psychologists are teaching” which is all well and good; but they haven’t dealt with it in the same way that I have and they don’t mention having watched anyone in their family suffer with it. You don’t know how bad it can be until you’ve lived with it yourself or with someone who has it. Scholarly research only goes so far and there is also a need to read work by secular psychologists in addition to the Christian ones because they do some worthy research as well and deserve an ear.
I am not saying that prayer shouldn’t be part of the treatment and that Scripture doesn’t have a place in counselling. I’m saying that there are times when more than the simple Word of God is needed and other forms of treatment would be more effective. There *are* spiritual and emotional causes to depression as well as some physical ones (such as thyroid problems) in addition to the simple chemical imbalances; and I think that we need to look at each situation holistically and treat it as such.
