Being diagnosed with the mental illnesses that I have, I was prescribed with medicine to take along with therapy. I just have insight that I want to share with others.
For those that aren't sure if they should take medicine, I say you should. I don't think they should be taken on their own, though. They should be taken under the supervision of your doctor/therapist/psychiatrist. There are a few reasons I say this.
They aren't there to fix you. The medicine isn't like aspirin that you can take and make your problems go away. They make your illness easier to manage. It is more akin to making things more balanced, but to say that alone would be false. If you are taking depression medicine, it isn't going to make you less depressed by making you happier. It takes away the factors that you can't control, such as chemical imbalances. So if there is a chemical that you have too much of or not enough of in the brain, the medicine is going to help treat that.
Now if your mental illness is only caused by chemical imbalances, taking the medicine would probably make you feel better. Those should stay under the supervision of a doctor in case things change. Maybe you will need a bigger dosage or a medicine change if it doesn't work. Maybe they can teach you techniques along with the medicine to make your illness easier to deal with.
For everyone else, the medicine will take away the chemical imbalances and leave you with the environmental causes of your illness. Medicine can stop your brain from making too much of the panic chemical, but it can't change the fact that you were scarred due to a childhood experience. The medicine will thus help you locate what the root causes of your illness is alongside help of a doctor. For some, it makes it easier to talk to therapist about their problems. If your brain was making too much of a certain chemical, you might be too anxious or cynical to even want to talk to a medical professional.
I don't only suggest you take your medicine for being able to help talk you through your problems, although that is a good plus, but also so that you have someone to look over you when you go through side effects. If you run into unfavorable ones, your doctor can adjust or change your medicine to help find something that works for you. More importantly, when they day comes that you no longer need to take the medicine you will need your doctor around. They will make sure that the experience is the most tolerable as it can be, since taking any medicine for a long period and lowering the dosage will have an effect on the body.
The last thing you want to do is suddenly stop your medication entirely, after taking it for a long period of time, without the supervision of a doctor. You shouldn't do that when under the supervision of a doctor! It is true that everyone is affected differently from medication, but this is still the worst things one can do. You will most likely be hit with withdrawal symptoms harder than that you would being weened off them. Unfortunately, there are two typical symptoms from lowering/stopping the medication: worsening the thing you are taking the medicine for, and suicidal thoughts. As you might imagine, running into these symptoms after suddenly stopping medication and not having a doctor around is very dangerous. So please, just don't do it.
If you are currently in a situation similar to this, but you don't have access to doctors, I have one suggestion: Reach out. Tell your family and friends what is going on with you, especially if they already know you are suffering and expressed they care. I am blessed to have access to such people myself. When I tell them when I am at my lowest, they do NOT let me out of their sight.
If you feel like you don't have anyone to reach out to, you are wrong. There are many resources out on the internet. I will even make it easy on you and link you to place with many resources. Click here to go to the resource page of Anxiety and Depression Association of America.
From personal experience, I can say that taking medication has made the process of tackling the root sources of my depression easier than before. I can also say that suddenly stopping your medication is the worst, at least for me. I wouldn't wish this on my enemies. I wish you all the best of luck in recovering from your mental illnesses.
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